









a y ? w 




WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
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TORONTO 



WHEN 
KANSAS WAS YOUNG 



BY 

T. A. McNEAL 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1922 



All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



.Ml4 



Copyright, 1922, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922. 



©CI.AG81951 



Presa of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



SEP 27 1922 



FOREWORD 

The stories contained in this book have been written 
at odd times and published in the Daily Capital of 
Topeka, Kansas. They were continued because the 
readers of the Capital seemed to enjoy them and asked 
for more. I received a good many requests that they 
be put into book form and through the kindness of The 
Macmillan Company this has been done. The stories 
present, I think, some pictures of frontier life and 
frontier characters not found in any other book. I 
hope the readers of the book will enjoy reading the 
stories as much as I have enjoyed writing them. If 
they do I will be more than satisfied. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAQB 

I. The Earliest Days: 

The Largest Indian Cowicil ,.,,.,. 1 

A Frontier Court 4 

When Slaves Were Hunted in Kansas ...... 7 

II. Happenings in the Seventies: 

A Frontier Foot Race 11 

Recollections of a Frontier Sheriff 16 

The Looting of a County 20 

The Old-Time Deestrict School 24, 

The Downfall of Pomeroy 29 

When Newton Was the Wickeedst Town .... 37 

An International Episode 39 

The Looting of Harper County 45 

The Legislature of 1874 49 

The Fight at Adobe Walls 53 

The Kansas Runnymede 57 

The Comanche Steal 61 

The Legislature of 1875 65 

A Whisky Murder 73 

Circumstantial Evidence . ■ 76 

The First Paper in Barber County 80 

The Wonderful Mirage ......... 83 

The Last Indian Raid in Kansas ...... 86 

The HilVman Case 89 

III. Picturesque Figures: 

A Frontier Surveyor 93 

Frontier Barbers 96 

(e Windy Smith" and "Tiger Jack 3 ' 99 

Bad Men — Real and Imitations ....... 103 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

A Border Justice 106 

A Frontier Attorney 109 

Didn't Recollect the President Ill 

Some Limbs of the Law 114 

"The Pilgrim Bard" 119 

Phrenology under Difficulties 124 

The Pioneer Preacher 129 

An Early-Day Murder and Man Hunt .... 133 

A Partisan Tombstone 136 

The Gambler Who Tempted Fate 138 

Pete and Ben 142 

IV. Events in the Eighties: 

A Fake Election 145 

When an Indian Agency Came Near Being Wiped 

Out 149 

The Justice of the Border 153 

The Great Winter Kill 159 

The Organization of Wichita County 163 

A Tragedy of the Frontier 170 

Draw Poker on the Border 177 

Cimarron vs. Ingalls 180 

A Steer Was the Ante 186 

When Hell Was in Session at Caldwell .... 189 

Campaigning on the Frontier 193 

The Tribulations of Early-Day Editors .... 197 

V. Striking Personalities: 

Jerry Svmspson 200 

Dynamite Dave 205 

Two Frontier Doctors 210 

Carrie Nation 214 

The Discomfited Hypnotist 218 

The Story of a Bank Wrecker 221 

Dennis T. Flynn 227 

A Populist Judge 231 

The Stinger Stung 235 

Boston Corbett 242 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER PAGE 

A Perfect Defense 246 

Captain Painter, Detective ........ 249 

VI. Kansas Growing Up: 

The Coming Back of Denver Boggs ..... 254 

When Bill Backslid f . 258 

The Rise and Fall of Grant Gillette 261 

Convicted under His Own Law 265 

The Last Raid of the Daltons 270 

Chester I. Long 276 

Governor Allen's Maiden Speech ...... 281 



WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 



WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

THE EAELIEE DAYS 

The Largest Indian Council 

Medicine Lodge, which has earned a place in 
Kansas history, is located at the confluence of 
the Medicine River and Elm Creek in the 
county of Barber. 

Few, if any, towns in the state have more sightly 
locations, and in the early days its natural beauty was 
accentuated by the fact that in order to reach it one 
had to travel across many miles of treeless prairie. My 
first sight of it was after a three days' tiresome ride 
in a freight wagon when, coming to the crest of a rise 
some three miles to the northeast, I saw the frontier 
village, at that distance, apparently almost surrounded 
by thick groves of cottonwood and elm trees, while here 
and there through rifts in the wooded fringe could be 
seen the swift flowing waters of the converging streams 
gleaming in the sunlight like ribbons of silver flecked 
with gold. 

The Medicine River derived its name from its sup- 
posed healing qualities and the thick grove at the 
junction of the two streams furnished a favorite camp- 
ing place for the Indians who met there on stated oc- 
casions, and under the guidance of their medicine men, 

1 



2 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

performed their savage rites and cleansed their systems 
with copious draughts of the sacred waters. 

Medicine Lodge, long before the advent of the white 
man, was the center of the favorite hunting ground of 
the red men. No other part of Kansas is so plentifully 
supplied with swift running streams, with sweeter 
native grasses, or such perfect natural shelter as Bar- 
ber County. The Medicine River, flowing from the 
northwest corner to the southeast, furnishes fully fifty 
miles of living water, just sufficiently saline to make it 
as desirable stock water as there is in the world. In 
addition, there are the swift flowing streams, most of 
them tributary to the Medicine, Turkey Creek, Elm 
Creek, Spring Creek and Antelope, Cottonwood, Big 
Mule and Little Mule, Bear Creek, Elk Creek, Hack- 
berry and Bitter Creek, with several others whose names 
just now escape my memory. 

The names of these streams indicate the variety of 
game that lured the Indian hunter and furnished meat 
for his wikiup. It is no wonder that he was loth to 
give up the hunting ground which had been the favorite 
of his ancestors, as well as his own. 

When after a long period of savage warfare the 
Government induced the head men of the leading prairie 
tribes to meet in a peace council and arrange terms of 
permanent peace between the white men and the red, 
by sort of common consent the location where Medicine 
Lodge now stands was chosen for the place of meeting. 
That was not only the greatest gathering of Indians 
and white men in the history of the United States in 
point of numbers, but the permanent results were the 
most important. Never since then, 1868, has there 
been a war between the great tribes represented at that 
peace council and the white men. The Indians who 
gave their word there kept the faith and buried the war 
tomahawk, never to dig it up again. It would be well 



THE EARLIER DAYS 3 

indeed for the world if so-called Christian white men 
had as high a sense of honor as these untutored savages. 

Of course no accurate count was taken of the number 
of tribesmen who attended that conference, but con- 
servative judges who were present estimated the number 
at not less than 15,000. 

In command of the United States forces, who 
guarded the commissioners, was General Sherman, and 
with him were some of the most experienced Indian 
fighters in the old army. Governor Crawford left his 
comfortable seat at the new state capital to attend the 
conference, and it was to his keen observation and 
knowledge of Indian character that the peace commis- 
sioners and the small body of United States troops 
were probably indebted for their lives. There were 
restless spirits among the Indians who had little faith 
in the word of the white men. This was not remarkable, 
for the history of the dealings of the white men with the 
Indians had been marred by bad faith and outrageous 
swindles perpetrated upon the red men. The restless 
spirits among the tribesmen persuaded their fellow 
savages that this was simply another scheme of the 
pale faces to take away from them their favorite hunt- 
ing grounds, to force them on to cramped reservations 
and there to let them die. They said that by a sur- 
prise attack they could overcome the white men and 
the pale-faced soldiers and massacre the entire outfit. 

It was a rather dark afternoon, with a drizzling 
rain. Conditions were favorable for a surprise attack. 
Crawford saw certain signs among the Indians which 
aroused his suspicions, which he communicated to Gen- 
eral Sherman, who at once drew up his troops in hollow 
square with a number of cannon pointed toward the 
savages, who were camped on the hills overlooking the 
river and grove. 

He also sent word that the chiefs who were suspected 



4 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of causing the trouble must come into the white camp 
to be held as hostages. That ended all plans for a 
massacre. The council lasted several days. A general 
agreement was reached and the treaty was duly signed 
by the United States commissioners and the leading 
chiefs of the great Indian tribes, the Arapahoes, Co- 
manches and Kiowas. The beautiful hunting grounds, 
the clear, swift flowing streams, the sheltering groves, 
all passed from the possession of the red men to the 
white, and within four years afterward the little town 
of Medicine Lodge had its beginning. 

A Frontier Court 

When the ninth judicial district of Kansas was 
formed it covered a territory larger than any one of 
more than half the states in the American Union. Ex- 
tending from Chase County southward to the Indian 
Territory and westward to the Colorado line, it was 
quite possible to travel in a straight line for 300 miles, 
all the distance being within the boundaries of this 
judicial district. 

The first judge of the district was the celebrated 
Col. Sam Wood, of Chase County, who was succeeded 
by William R. Brown, also of Chase County. Sam 
Wood looked the part of a frontier judge, but Brown 
was a typical New Englander in appearance and 
speech. Shortsightedness compelled him to wear 
glasses, and added to the dignity and solemnity of his 
appearance. A full reddish beard reached half way 
to his waist, and tossed about in the loyal winds which 
loved it well. 

It fell to Judge Brown to hold the first term of 
court in the newly organized county of Barber. Court 
house there was none, although the thieves who or- 
ganized the county had incurred sufficient debt, osten- 



THE EARLIER DAYS 5 

sibly for that purpose, to have built a fine temple of 
justice. The opening term was held, I think, in a 
schoolhouse which had just been completed. The 
sheriff was a unique character by the name of Reuben 
Lake. With great dignity and solemnity the new judge 
directed the sheriff to open court. Reuben had some- 
where learned the usual formula for opening court, 
and varied it with some observations of his own. In 
stentorian voice he announced to the assembled crowd: 

"Hear ye, hear ye; the honorable district court for 
Barber County is now in session. All you blank, blank 
sons of blank who have business in this court will lay 
off your guns and come to the front, and all you blank, 
blank sons of blank who have no business in this court 
will lay off your guns and keep quiet." 

Just what the solemn and dignified judge thought of 
the manner in which the court was opened is not stated. 
The dean of the early Barber County bar was Captain 
Byron P. Ayers. Captain Ayers was born in Ohio, 
educated for a teacher, but studied law and wandered 
westward until he reached the territory of Kansas. He 
took some interest in territorial politics and was elected 
chief clerk of the territorial council back in the fifties. 
When the war came he was made captain of one of the 
Kansas companies, fought with Lyon at Wilson's 
Creek, with Blunt at Prairie Grove, and in the other 
battles of the West. With a wide acquaintance among 
the leading men of the new state and a creditable rec- 
ord as a soldier, his prospects were bright, but John 
Barleycorn got a strangle hold on him and made his 
life a failure. He seemed to me to be a man who had 
been more than ordinarily gifted by nature and with 
really great possibilities, but who had entirely given 
up the fight. When knocked down in the first round 
he lacked the energy, determination, and courage to 
get up and fight again. To the hour of his death, how- 



6 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

ever, he retained a certain marked dignity of bearing 
and distinction of presence which would have caused 
him to attract attention in any assembly. His con- 
versation was remarkably free from inaccuracies of 
expression, his literary taste was excellent, and even 
when fairly well "tanked up" he was never guilty of 
vulgarity or maudlin silliness. He was, in fact, rather 
more dignified and precise when full than when sober. 

His regular habitation was in the little hamlet called 
Sun City, but having been elected county attorney, an 
office which paid, as I recall, $500 a year in "scrip," 
worth at that time from fifteen to twenty cents on the 
dollar, he was a frequent visitor at the Lodge, and 
when there slept in the hayloft of the livery stable. It 
must not be supposed, however, that this was any dis- 
grace. In fact, nearly everybody who did not happen 
to have homes of their own slept in the livery stable. 

One morning, following an evening and night of 
unusual potations, Cap awoke with that feeling that 
comes "the morning after." His eyes were bloodshot, 
and millet straw and millet seed were plentifully mingled 
with his hair and long auburn beard. Altogether he 
was a picture of disconsolateness and disgust. He sat 
up and turning to a fellow lodger he said in a mourn- 
ful, almost sepulchral voice: "Ten thousand years 
hence, when we both are dead and damned, our ghosts 
will sit on the dark Plutonian shore and read the record 
of our misspent lives by the red glare of hell." 

Speaking of Captain Ayers brings to mind another 
remarkable character, who came to the Lodge later. 
He always signed his name Dr. G. W. Ayers. He was a 
horse doctor, possessed of a most remarkable vocabu- 
lary, and a facility for original and striking expres- 
sions such as I have never seen equaled. I think that 
Doc and truth had never met, or at least had never 
formed a speaking acquaintance. There were times 



THE EARLIER DAYS 7 

when I considered him one of the most spontaneous 
and delightful old liars I ever met. Back in 1874, 
several years before I reached Barber County, there 
was a saloon row in the frontier drink emporium, in 
the course of which Captain Byron P. Ayers was 
slightly wounded. 

Doc Ayers came to the Lodge during the early 
eighties, but one day, forgetting that I knew when he 
arrived, he entertained me with an account of the old 
saloon row. 

"I was the only doctor in the town," he said. "They 
sent for me. I found when I got there that a bullet 
had plowed across Cap Ayers' midriff and let his 
bowels out. It occurred to me, when I looked him over, 
that he had more bowels than he needed and so I cut 
off a couple of feet of intestines, put the rest back and 
sewed him up." 

This most marvelous surgical operation performed 
by a horse doctor, he assured me, caused Captain 
Ayers little inconvenience. 

For many years the body of Capt. Byron P. Ayers 
has lain in what I presume is an unmarked and uncared 
for grave. As I think of his wasted talent I am re- 
minded of Whittier's 

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen 
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!' " 



When Slaves Were Hunted in Kansas 

The first volume of Kansas reports of the supreme 
court also contains the reports of the territorial court 
of the last year of Kansas territory. In this as in 
all the Kansas reports there are a good many human 
interest stories, among them one relating to the last 



8 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

days of slavery when Kansas was the battle ground 
and the nation was rapidly drifting into the maelstrom 
of war. 

On January 2, 1859, a slave named Peter Fisher 
escaped from Kentucky and for some reason, instead 
of taking the short cut to Canada and freedom seems 
to have headed westward and landed in Kansas ter- 
ritory. Here he fell in with a friend, one Lewis L. 
Weld, of Leavenworth County, who took him into his 
employment. 

The owners of Fisher were two minors, John O. 
Hutchison and Anna Belle Hutchison, whose alleged 
guardian, somehow getting track of Peter, followed 
him into the territory. 

If he supposed, however, that it would be very easy 
to get the fugitive and carry him back to bondage 
from a United States territory, he was disillusioned. 
Judging from the indictment found by the territorial 
grand jury things were lively when he found his negro. 
The indictment reads as follows : "Lewis Weld with 
force of arms to wit : with a club, knife, pistol and 
other hurtful weapons did aid the said Peter to escape," 
etc. 

It is entirely probable also that Peter himself took 
a hand with some of the "other hurtful weapons," 
quite probably with a hoe, fork, corn cutter, and such 
other farm implements as were "convenient and ef- 
fective." 

Lewis Weld was promptly arrested under the Fugi- 
tive Slave Act and as promptly indicted by the grand 
jury, made up no doubt of Southern sympathizers 
from the bordering state of Missouri. Weld's attor- 
neys filed a motion to quash the indictment and the 
motion came on to be heard before Chief Justice Pettit 
of the territorial court. Weld's attorneys urged eleven 
objections to the indictment, the first being that the 



THE EARLIER DAYS 9 

party who made the arrest had no authority to do so 
under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. Judge 
Pettit sustained this objection as well as five others, 
though one wonders, if the first objection was well 
taken, why the need of any others. The language of 
the opinion indicates the difficulties under which the 
courts of that early period labored. Judge Pettit 
says : This opinion has been hastily written in the 
midst of turmoil and confusion; in the absence of a 
library to consult and without time to correct or pay 
much attention to legal diction; but I am confident 
that in its main features it will stand the test of the 
most searching and rigid legal and judicial criticism.'* 
So far as I know, the judge's confidence in the sound- 
ness of his opinion was never shaken by the adverse 
decision of a higher court and Weld does not seem to 
have been again arrested. What became of the fugi- 
tive, Fisher, I do not know, but it is safe to assume 
that he never again was reduced to slavery. 

Pettit was a man of ability and considerable dis- 
tinction. He was born at Sa'cket Harbor, June 24, 
1807, was admitted to the bar in 1831 and engaged in 
the practice of the law at Lafayette, in the then new 
state of Indiana. He served three terms in Congress 
and a short time as senator from the state of Indiana 
and was appointed chief justice of the territory of 
Kansas in 1859, by President Buchanan, serving in 
that capacity until Kansas was admitted to the Union. 
While in the course of the opinion above referred to, 
he very frankly expresses his sympathy for the insti- 
tution of slavery and especially his commendation of 
the Fugitive Slave Law, his pride in his opinion as a 
lawyer was stronger than his prejudice against the 
man who would aid an escaping slave. After the ter- 
ritorial court gave place to the state courts, Judge 
Pettit moved back to Indiana, still firm in the Demo- 



10 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

cratic faith and probably at heart a sympathizer with 
the South, as he was selected as a delegate to the 
Democratic convention of 1864, which made the famous 
platform declaration that the war was a failure, and 
demanding a compromise with the Confederacy, a dec- 
laration by the way which kept the Democratic party 
out of power nationally for more than a quarter of a 
century. 

In 1870 Judge Pettit was elected to the supreme 
court in Indiana where he served until 1876. He died 
at Lafayette, June 17, 1877, within one week of his 
seventieth birthday. 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 

A Frontier Foot Race 

Barber county was unique in that it was 
fairly well timbered, while east and north of it 
was a treeless prairie. For several years after 
the first settlement, a considerable part of the male in- 
habitants of the county made a living for themselves 
and families by hauling cedar posts to Wichita and 
Hutchinson. The posts were gathered out of the can- 
yons of Barber and Comanche Counties. In addition to 
the cedar, there were found along the numerous streams 
very considerable groves of cottonwood, elm, hack- 
berry, and walnut. As most of the timber grew on 
government land, that is on land the government held in 
trust for the Osage Indians, no one had a legal right to 
cut and haul away any of it, but in these days by com- 
mon consent certain laws were respected and others 
were not. While the settlers in Barber considered it 
entirely legitimate to cut and haul timber from the 
government land either to sell it or use it for fuel, they 
drew the line to a considerable extent on outsiders. 

It Was not uncommon for some Barberite, who had 
secured an appointment as deputy United States mar- 
shal, to arrest some impecunious woodhauler from 
Harper, Pratt, or Kingman County, make him give up 
his load and in some cases what money he might hap- 
pen to have on his person, under threat that if he 
refused to come across he would be dragged before a 
United States court and jailed and fined. It is only 

11 



12 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

fair to say that not many men would engage in this 
sort of a blackmailing scheme, but a few unprincipled 
scoundrels did make some revenue in that way. One 
day a party of Harper men drove over into Barber 
and loaded their wagons with firewood cut from gov- 
ernment land. Among them was a boy of perhaps 
fifteen by the name of Kittleman. The woodhaulers 
made the mistake of driving through the town of Medi- 
cine Lodge with their loads. The sheriff and his 
deputy, who were not very busy that day, arrested the 
Harper men, compelled them to unload, and, with some 
admonitions about the seriousness of cutting and re- 
moving timber from public lands, permitted them to 
proceed homeward with empty wagons, sadder and 
also decidedly madder men than they were before. 
Their despoilers regarded it a good joke on the Harper 
men, and also an easy way of securing firewood, for 
they immediately appropriated the loads which had 
been gathered with much labor and perspiration by 
the men from Harper. 

Young Kittleman treasured the memory of that 
transaction and determined that some time he would 
get even with Medicine Lodge. He was a wonderfully 
active boy and as he grew developed a passion for ath- 
letic sports, especially foot racing. When he was 
perhaps seventeen or eighteen his attention was called 
to a prize that was offered by the county fair associa- 
tion of Sumner County, for the man or boy who could 
run 100 yards in the shortest time, and young Kittle- 
man determined to try for the prize. The purse was 
large enough to attract a professional foot racer who 
beat the Harper lad, but he made such a phenomenal 
showing for an untrained racer that he attracted the 
attention of a professional foot racer and trainer, who 
proposed to undertake his training with the idea of 
becoming his manager afterward. Under the careful 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 13 

instruction of this trainer, Kittlcman within a couple 
of years developed into the swiftest short distance run- 
ner in the United States and probably in the world. 
As his fame spread, however, there still lingered in his 
mind the humiliation of having been wronged on that 
wood deal years before. While he was running races 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he was figuring be- 
times on a plan to get even. 

In the railroadless frontier town there was not much 
to do and time often hung heavy on the hands of the 
resident sports. They necessarily had to depend on 
their own resources for amusement. Pony races were 
a favorite form of diversion, but local foot races were 
a close second. Young men and some who were not 
so young, who thought they could run, would go out 
on the prairie, take off boots and socks, and run bare- 
foot. Small wagers of from $1 to $5 were made to 
increase the interest. One day a lean sinewy young 
man came in on the overland stage and announced that 
he was looking for a location for a sheep ranch. A 
local foot race was on and to pass away the time the 
prospective sheep rancher strolled out with the crowd. 
He seemed quite a good deal interested; said that he 
had always taken great interest in athletics and espe- 
cially foot racing; in fact had at one time been a 
professional foot racer himself and still kept his racing 
shoes and tights as mementoes of his former triumphs. 
The local racers immediately began to coax him to 
give an exhibition of his ability ; most of them had 
never seen a professional foot racer in action. The 
young man, who said his name was Calder, at first was 
reluctant ; said that he had given up all that sort of 
thing when he made up his mind to settle down on a 
ranch, but finally agreed, just to be a good fellow, that 
he would give an exhibition of his prowess. His run- 
ning was a revelation to the Medicine Lodgers. He 



14 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

could run so much faster than the swiftest of them, 
that they almost seemed to be standing still. Then, 
too, when dressed in his scanty racing costume he 
seemed to them like a perfect specimen of a runner. 
One of his stunts was to beat a horse running 100 
yards. He would run fifty yards, turn at a post set 
in the ground, and then back to the starting point. 
Where he had the advantage of the horse was in the 
quicker start and the ability to turn at the post before 
the horse could either stop or turn. 

The admiration and confidence in Calder grew apace 
among the Medicine Lodgers. They were satisfied 
that he was a world beater ; in fact he assured them 
that he was probably the swiftest man on foot in the 
world. True, he didn't seem to be making any par- 
ticular effort to find a sheep ranch, but they did not 
think of that until afterward. Finally a local sport 
asked Calder if he knew M. K. Kittleman. He said 
that he had never heard of him. He was told that 
Kittleman claimed to be a great runner and had made 
the Harper people believe that he was about the fastest 
man who ever came down the pike. Calder smiled 
knowingly ; said that he had seen local runners who 
got that fool idea in their heads until they ran up 
against some person like himself who could really run, 
and then they discovered that they couldn't deliver the 
goods. There was some old time rivalry between Medi- 
cine Lodge and Harper and here was chance to take 
the railroad town down a few notches. Word was 
sent to the Harper people that if they thought their 
man Kittleman was a runner, to bring him over to the 
Lodge where there was a man who would trim him. 
Kittleman was willing, suspiciously, joyously willing, 
as was recalled afterward. A purse was made up by 
Medicine Lodgers of $100 with the privilege of bet- 
ting all they cared to on the side. 

The race was to start with the shot of a revolver, 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 15 

the distance 100 yards. When Kittleman stripped 
for the contest there was a look of surprise on the 
faces of a good many Medicine Lodge sports. At 
that time Kittleman was the finest specimen of physical 
manhood I have ever seen. He stood nearly six feet 
and was magnificently proportioned. Without an 
ounce of surplus flesh and apparently no over develop- 
ment, his muscles rippled under his skin, which was 
white as marble and soft as satin. For the first time 
the backers of Calder discovered that in point of 
physical development their supposed champion was no 
match for the Harper lad. But they had seen him 
run and had confidence. Besides, had he not assured 
them that he was the fastest runner in the United 
States and that he would make that man Kittleman 
look like a tortoise? So they cheerfully bet their sub- 
stance, which Kittleman and his backers eagerly 
covered and hungered for more. At the crack of the 
pistol Kittleman seemed to shoot through the air like 
an arrow from a bow. At the first bound he covered 
at least twenty-five feet and the Medicine Lodge sports 
knew that their money was gone. Calder was beaten 
about ten yards and at that Kittleman seemed to make 
little effort. 

When the stake money was handed over to the victor 
Calder burst into tears; said that he had bet every 
dollar he had in the world on himself and that now he 
was dead broke among comparative strangers. His 
plea touched the hearts of the cowboys who immedi- 
ately took up a collection for his benefit and, though 
they had been losers themselves, turned over to him 
$25 or $30, sufficient to pay his way back to his friends. 
The next day the Medicine Lodgers learned that Kit- 
tleman and Calder were having a very pleasant time 
together in Harper, as they divided their winnings, 
according to previous arrangement. 

"I think may be," remarked Kittleman afterward, 



16 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

"that I am even with those Medicine Lodge 

fellows for that load of wood." 



Recollections of a Frontier Sheriff 

No one would suppose from looking at the rugged 
form and face of the present mayor of the city of 
Wellington, that he has lived long enough to have been 
a peace officer and terror to evil doers along the border 
almost half a century ago, but the fact is that away 
back in the seventies Joe Thralls had already estab- 
lished a reputation as a hunter of criminals that was 
known all along the border. Cool, tireless, fearless, 
and yet never reckless, he had a record of generally 
getting the men he went after, no matter how desperate 
they were, or how great the difficulties in the way of 
the man-hunter. In the storehouse of his memory there 
are many interesting stories and some of them he has 
been induced to tell. 

"I guess/' said the ex-sheriff, in a reminiscent way, "that 
the year 1874 was about the worst year that Sumner County 
ever experienced. First, there was the drouth that cooked 
almost everything, and then came the grasshoppers and 
cleaned up what little was left. On top of all this trouble, 
came the news that the Indians were about to go on the 
warpath. There were some killings, too. Pat Hennesy 
and some other white men were killed that summer down 
on the old Chisholm trail, where the town of Hennesy is 
located, and John D. Miles, the agent at Darlington, had 
warned the settlers that an outbreak was threatened and 
that the settlers along the Kansas border had better pre- 
pare for the worst. 

"At two o'clock in the morning of July 6, a little sawed- 
off freighter by the name of Fletcher rode into Wellington 
yelling 'Indians' at every jump of his horse and appealing 
for men and arms to defend Caldwell against the antici- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 17 

pated attack. In answer to this appeal, twenty-one citizens 
of Wellington armed themselves, saddled their horses, and 
set out for Caldwell. The Indian scare had driven most 
of the horse thieves operating down in the Territory into 
Caldwell. They were worse than the Indians and when 
we found a bunch of them eating breakfast at Caldwell 
it made us want to turn the Indian hunt into a horse-thief 
capturing expedition. So bold had these thieves become 
that one of them told one of Vail and Williamson's men 
who were waiting to start their stage line in the territory, 
that the stage company's mules, which had been stolen a 
few weeks before, were now on Polecat Creek, south of 
Caldwell, and asked him what the stage company was 
going to do about it. Soon after breakfast scouts came 
in from the south and reported that there were no Indians 
within several miles of the border. J. C. Hopkins and his 
brother were at that time running the Pond Creek ranch, 
twenty-five miles south of Caldwell, where they had a store 
and about 600 head of cattle. 

"They had been in Caldwell several days on account of 
the Indian scare and after hearing this report from the 
scouts they decided to go back to the ranch. They started 
out alone and within an hour eight well known toughs and 
thieves were following them. We believed that it was the 
intention of these thieves to kill the Hopkins brothers, run 
off their stock, loot the store, and then charge the crime 
up to the Indians. A party of us decided to follow them. 
The party was made up of Bill Hackney, Jim Stipp, John 
Kirk, A. W. Shearman, C. S. Broadbent, Capt. L. K. 
Myers, W. E. and J. M. Thralls. 

"After a brisk ride we caught up with the thieves, who 
were riding a short distance behind the two Hopkins 
brothers. When we rode up they stopped and were ap- 
parently holding a conference, but they followed on after 
our party. We had caught up with the Hopkins brothers, 
who were mighty glad to see us, for they had also guessed 
that the purpose of the thieves was to murder them. 

"On arriving at Polecat ranch, we stopped to let our 
horses feed on the grass for an hour or two. We had noth- 
ing to eat ourselves. The thieves came up and stopped, 



18 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

also. One of our party carried a three-band Sharp's needle 
gun and a belt full of cartridges. A gun of that kind was 
a very valuable asset in those days, although dangerous at 
both ends when fired. The thieves coveted this gun so 
much that they were willing at one time to measure 
strength with our party to get it. They even demanded it, 
and finally said that if we didn't give it up, they would 
take it just the same. Everybody was ready on our side 
for them to open the ball, when Bill Hackney, who then 
was in his prime, opened up on the thieves in characteristic 
Hackney style. I have heard Bill cuss a good many times, 
but never heard him do as artistic a job as he did that day. 
The rest of us were no mollycoddles, but Bill's language 
almost made us shudder. In substance, Bill spoke as 

follows : 'If you sons of want that gun, come 

and get it, but I want to say that if one of you makes a 
move in that direction, there will be a lot of dead horse 
thieves left here on the ground for buzzard feed.' 

"Bill's defiance had its effect. The thieves looked Bill 
and the rest of the party over and decided that the job 
was too dangerous. Had the fight commenced we might 
have lost some of our party, but that whole bunch of thieves 
would almost certainly have died, which would have saved 
a lynching party the trouble of hanging two of them a few 
days after that on Slate Creek. 

"The first murder that was committed in Wellington," 
continued the mayor, "was in May, 1872. It resulted in 
a lynching and as a rather singular coincidence the man 
lynched was named Lynch; also it may be said in passing 
that Lynch was lynched for the murder of a man he did 
not kill. True, he probably deserved hanging on general 
principles, but he was not guilty of that particular crime. 

"Two hunters, named Smith and Blanchard, known as 
'Red Shirt,' on account of the fiery red shirt he wore, came 
to town and were painting it red, drinking and gambling. 
During the day they met Lynch, a gambler and all-round 
tough, who owned a race horse and went swaggering 
around with a pair of revolvers belted on as part of his 
dress. 

"The four continued drinking, gambling, and quarreling 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 19 

all afternoon and evening, and about nine o'clock Smith 
and Lynch drew their guns, but were prevented from 
shooting at the time, and both left the saloon, each swear- 
ing he would get the other. Lynch, with his gun in his 
hand, went out at the north front door and turned east, 
stopping a few feet east of the door, where he was in the 
shadow and could watch the front door of the saloon. He 
had been there only a few minutes when Smith stepped 
to the front door. Lynch, without warning, fired at him 
from a distance of not more than ten feet. The ball struck 
the outside door casing, plowed through the soft pine for 
about eight inches and struck Smith in the breast, going 
through his outside clothing and lodging against his under- 
shirt. Lynch, no doubt, supposing that he had killed his 
man, ran across the public square in a northwesterly direc- 
tion, firing two more shots as he ran. He was evidently 
carrying both his guns cocked and pointed downward, and 
must have unconsciously pulled the triggers in his excite- 
ment. As a result, he put a bullet through each of his 
feet. When Smith was hit he jumped back inside the 
saloon exclaiming, 'I am shot,' but finding that he was not 
hurt much, he jerked out his gun and ran out of the south 
rear door of the saloon, looking for Lynch. He saw a man 
standing just east and in line with the saloon and, suppos- 
ing it was Lynch, fired, killing a man by the name of 
Maxwell, who lived on the Chickaskia River, not far from 
Drury. 

"Maxwell had come to town on an errand of mercy and 
charity, to solicit aid for two of his unfortunate neighbors 
and their families who had had the misfortune to lose 
everything they had in the way of buildings, furniture, and 
feed in a terrible prairie fire. When Smith saw the mistake 
he had made, he determined to fasten the crime on Lynch, 
and with the aid of his pal 'Red Shirt,' he succeeded in 
making the people believe that Maxwell had been killed 
by Lynch. Maxwell was a good man, popular with his 
neighbors, and his murder aroused great indignation. Next 
day his neighbors began arriving in town. By midnight 
there were more than a hundred of them. Meantime Smith 
and Blanchard, 'Red Shirt,' having succeeded in throwing 



20 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the blame for the killing on Lynch, decided that they would 
get out of town while the getting was good. The settlers, 
neighbors of the dead man, while perhaps not doubting 
that it was Lynch who fired the fatal shot, felt that in a 
way the other two were partly responsible for the murder 
and insisted that they should be arrested. A posse started 
after them, followed them for thirty or forty miles, and 
then lost their trail. Lynch had been arrested and kept in 
concealment by the officers, but early Sunday morning the 
searchers discovered where he was hidden and he was taken 
in charge by the vigilance committee. Lynch realized that 
death was near and sent for a lawyer to make his will. 
D. N. Caldwell, then a young man out of law school, de- 
clined the job. He said that he was young and inexperi- 
enced and it would be better to get an old lawyer to do the 
job. So Judge Riggs was sent for, drew the last will and 
testament of the condemned man, who bequeathed all of 
his property to a sister living in another state. With the 
preliminaries disposed of at the command of the leader, the 
mob of one hundred men or more marched quietly to where 
Lynch was being held, placed him on his own horse and 
with a double row of guards on either side he was taken 
down to the timber on Slate Creek, where a rope was placed 
about his neck and fastened to a limb, and then his horse 
was led away. Although the real murderer was not hanged, 
the execution had a salutary effect on evil doers for years 
afterward. Still it can hardly be said that justice has been 
satisfied, for the man who did murder Maxwell still lives. 

"The body of Lynch was buried in the Potters' Field at 
the old cemetery and for many years those passing along 
the road were shown a low lying mound marking the grave 
where rested the body of the first man hung for murder in 
Sumner County." 

The Looting of a County 

If ever there was a municipal organization conceived 
in sin and brought forth in iniquity it was the organi- 
zation of Barber County. During the early seventies 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 21 

it occurred to a number of enterprising thieves that 
the organization of counties in central and western 
Kansas offered an inviting field for exploitation at 
comparatively little risk to the exploiters. There were 
practically no permanent residents in that part of the 
state at that time and consequently few who had a 
personal interest in preventing the robbery consum- 
mated under forms of law. 

The statute governing the organization of new 
counties required at that time at least 600 bona fide 
inhabitants within the territory to be organized. In 
1872 there were probably not more than 100 bona fide 
inhabitants in the territory included within the boun- 
daries of the proposed county, but that fact presented 
no impediment to the predatory gang which had per- 
fected its plan of loot. A census taker was appointed 
who was void of either conscience or fear of future 
punishment, and from convenient hotel registers he 
copied the requisite number of names, swore that they 
were bona fide residents within the territory of the pro- 
posed county, and the preliminaries were arranged with 
an ease and speed which would have excited the envy 
of a professional highwayman. 

There were some honest men even then living in the 
territory which now composes the county of Barber, 
but as I have intimated, they had no vested interest in 
the country. They were the possessors of herds of 
cattle of varying size, grazing on the native grasses, 
but they did not expect to remain permanently in that 
country. Unfortunately most men are so constituted 
that they do not become deeply concerned about graft 
unless that graft touches them in some way. So the 
conditions were particularly favorable for the high- 
binders who figured out a scheme of organizing coun- 
ties, loading them with bonds, selling the bonds to sup- 
posed innocent purchasers, pocketing the proceeds and, 



22 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

when the harvest of loot had been gathered, folding 
their tents like the Arab and silently stealing away. 

The first meeting of the new board of county com- 
missioners, so far as the records show, was held in 
Medicine Lodge on July 7, 1873. These commissioners 
were not the master spirits in the conspiracy, but they 
were willing servants and showed the industry of the 
busy bee, which flits from flower to flower gathering 
honey as it flits. About the first business of impor- 
tance transacted was to issue $25,000 in county war- 
rants to one C. C. Beemis, in consideration of which 
he was supposed to build a court house. It, of course, 
showed great confidence in the integrity of Mr. Beemis 
to issue to him the entire contract price before he had 
furnished a brick, a board, or a nail that was to go 
into the building, but the confidence seemed to have 
been misplaced, as Mr. Beemis did not even commence 
the erection of the court house. His failure, however, 
did not interfere with the friendly relations or confi- 
dence of the board of commissioners, who made no 
effort to compel him to fulfill his contract or return 
the warrants which had been issued. In fact the com- 
missioners acted on the theory that if at first you don't 
succeed try, try again, and next time proposed to 
vote bonds to build a court house to the extent of 
$40,000. By that time some of the residents of the 
county, although temporary, objected to the issuance 
of more bonds or warrants to build a court house, in 
view of the fact that $25,000 had already been stolen, 
and they rallied enough votes to defeat the bonds. 
This, however, did not dash or discourage the com- 
missioners, who issued the warrants anyhow, and then 
through an act of the Legislature put through by the 
leader of the gang, the first legislative member from 
Barber, they issued funding bonds to cover the debt. 
Still no court house was built. Not a brick was laid 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 23 

or a single foundation stone. The busy board had also 
issued some forty or fifty thousand dollars in warrants 
to build bridges and, considering the number of streams 
there are in the county, I have no doubt they were 
astonished at their own moderation. 

The bridges were not built, but then they might have 
stolen more. At the instance of members of the gang 
a railroad corporation called the Nebraska, Kansas & 
Southwestern was organized. Not only in the lan- 
guage of a former member of the Kansas Legislature 
did this road "not terminate at either end" but it had 
no existence except on paper. Yet the looters man- 
aged to put over an alleged bond election by which the 
new county voted $100,000 ten per cent bonds to this 
mythical corporation and then, in violation of the spirit 
if not the letter of the law under which the road was 
supposed to be built before the bonds were issued, the 
board of commissioners issued and sold the bonds with- 
out there being a single mile of road constructed. The 
bonds passed into the hands of an English capitalist, a 
member of the British Parliament. Afterward the tax- 
payers of Barber resisted payment of the bonds, and 
carried the litigation through the courts up to the su- 
preme court, but they lost in the end and are to-day 
paying the principal and interest of that utterly fraud- 
ulent obligation. 

Finally, the shameless stealings of the looters roused 
the fury of the settlers, who were coming to look on 
the county, with its clear streams, its beautiful valleys, 
its sweet hills and groves and canyons as their perma- 
nent abiding place. So they formed their vigilance 
committee, with the avowed and laudable purpose of 
hanging the thieves. They did round up a part of the 
gang, but made the fatal error of permitting them to 
talk. The spokesman for the gang offered to restore 
the loot already taken and to leave the county forever. 



24? WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

They did leave the county, but took with them the 
county warrant books and county seal, and from the 
safe retreat of Hutchinson they proceeded to issue new 
evidence of indebtedness against the sorely plundered' 
municipality. Of course, it is unnecessary to say that 
they never restored any of the plunder they had gar- 
nered under forms of law. A member of the vigilance 
committee was heard afterwards to remark, "If we 
hadn't been a passel of dam fools we would a-hung 
them blank-blank sons-of-blank first and then listened 
to what they had to say afterwards.' 5 

The Old-Time Deestrict School 

"When I was a boy going to a country school," said 
an old timer, "we had what was known far and wide as 
about the toughest district school in the state. There 
were six big boys, ranging from sixteen to twenty or 
twenty-one years old. Most of them were great, husky 
fellows and one or two would weigh fully 175 pounds." 
These young fellows bullied the rest of the school, espe- 
cially the little boys, and in school did just about as 
they pleased. They boasted that they would whip any 
teacher who undertook to make them mind his rules 
and it may be said they were ready and anxious to 
make good the threat. They usually intimidated the 
teacher and ran the school according to their own 
notion. Two teachers had undertaken to control them 
and were beaten up and run out of school as a conse- 
quence. The fame of our school extended until it was 
difficult to get any teacher. 

One fall day there appeared in the neighborhood a 
rather small, although trimly built young man, who 
said that he was an applicant for the job of teaching 
school. The leading director looked him over and then 
said: 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 25 

"I guess, young man, that you never have heard 
much about this school or you wouldn't hanker after 
the job. There are at least six boys in our school 
bigger than you and any one of them, I think, could 
handle you in a fight, unless you are a much better 
man than you look to be. The boys are tarnal mean, 
and I would be glad to see a teacher who could trim 
them as they deserve, but you haven't the heft to 
handle the job and get away with it. Last winter the 
teacher lasted just two weeks. Then them pesky 
youngsters took him out and ducked him in the pond 
and told him to hit the road away from the school- 
house and keep goin', which he did. Winter before 
last we got a big fellow to teach the school, who had 
something of a reputation as a fighter. He did a 
great deal of talkin' about how he would bring the 
boys to time, but when it came to the test the boys 
combined and beat him up and whipped him till he 
had to go to bed for a week. He quit right then. He 
would weigh fifty pounds more than you and if he 
couldn't handle the job I don't see no chance for you." 

The young man listened quietly and replied mildly 
that he didn't think he would have any serious trouble 
with these young men ; that he always got along pretty 
well with young folks, especially with boys, and that 
he would like to have a chance to see what he could do. 

"Well," said the old farmer-director, "I will call 
the board together and present your application. If 
the other two are willin' I will give you a trial, because 
it's gettin' to be nearly impossible to get a teacher, 
but I give you fair warnin' that I don't think you will 
last more than a week, unless you give in and let them 
fellers run the school." 

Well, the directors finally concluded that they would 
give the slim young teacher a chance to try his hand, 
not that they had any faith in his ability to control 



26 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the school, but the law required that there should be 
a school and there were no other applicants. 

On the first day of school all the big six were on 
hand. There was Bill Stevens, who was a leader of 
the gang, twenty years old, and would weigh fully 
175 pounds and there was no surplus flesh. Jack 
Williams was his second, nearly as big as Bill and just 
as mean. Then there was Tom Walker, nineteen years 
old, weighed about 160 pounds; Elias Tompkins, about 
the same age and weight ; Lige Sangers, eighteen years 
old, weighed about 150 pounds, and Tobe Elder, the 
youngest and also one of the meanest in the gang. He 
was only seventeen years old but he was as big and 
husky as the average young man when twenty years old. 

They slouched into school with Bill Stevens in the 
lead and sat down with their hats on. The young 
slender, mild-looking teacher called the school to order 
and then in a gentle voice said, "All the pupils will 
take off their hats, please." 

As the members of the gang did not remove their 
hats, the teacher turning to Bill Stevens said, still 
speaking in his easy mild tone of voice with no trace 
of excitement or irritation : 

"Perhaps you young gentlemen did not understand 
my request. I always make it a rule in my school to 
have all the pupils remove their hats." 

"Yes," said Bill insolently, "we heard you all right, 
but we ain't ac'customed to removin' our hats, we are 
somewhat afraid we will ketch cold in the haid." 

"There is no danger, I think, of your catchi'ng cold 
in the head in this house, at any rate I guess we will 
have to risk it. I will have to ask you again to remove 
your hats." 

All the answer he got was a s»n<eering laugh from the 
six. Not one of them made any move toward removing 
his hat. Then a most surprising tiling happened. The 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 27 

slender young teacher, with a swiftness that was as- 
tounding, kicked Bill's hat from his head and then 
with a lightning blow hit the big bully fair on the 
point of the chin, knocking him senseless to the floor. 
The fight was on. Jack Williams came on with a 
bellow of rage and the others joined the rush toward 
the teacher. With surprising agility he avoided the 
onslaught and so maneuvered that Jack was separated 
from his fellows. Jack was trying to clinch, but while 
he had been in many a rough and tumble fight he knew 
little about guarding his face, and a smashing blow at 
the butt of the ear sent him to join his leader in dream- 
land. The other four were already sensing the fact 
that this was an entirely different sort of a teacher 
from any they had ever had any experience with here- 
tofore, but the fight was not out of them yet. 

"Close in on him," yelled Tom Walker and all the 
four tried to get in together. As they came on the 
slender teacher deftly tripped the leader to the floor, 
piled two others on top of him and smashed the face 
of the fourth with a blow that brought the blood pour- 
ing from his nose. Then as fast as the young fellows 
tried to get up he smashed them, tripped them, and 
mauled them until bloody and discomfited they were 
ready to quit. By this time Bill Stevens was recover- 
ing consciousness. He slowly staggered to his feet when 
he was floored with a left to his face and a terrific jolt 
on his solar plexus with the right, which not only put 
him down and out, but left him writhing in agony. In 
a few minutes the fight was over. The slender teacher 
was .breathing a little more quickly than under ordi- 
nary conditions, but there was not a mark of the con- 
flict on his person and his voice showed no indication 
of excitement. 

"Take your seats, young gentlemen," he said quietly 
and they did. "Remove your hats." The hats went 



28 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

off. "There is the basin which I brought to school 
this morning and there is the water. William Stevens, 
if you feel able to walk, go and wash your face and 
hands and then return to your seat quietly." Bill 
staggered to the water pail and proceeded dizzily with 
his ablutions. He was followed in regular order by 
the other members of the gang. And then a most 
crestfallen and battered six waited for further orders. 

"Young gentlemen," said the teacher, "this has been 
an interesting and I may say enjoyable occasion. Dur- 
ing my six years as trainer in boxing, wrestling, and 
general athletics, I never have experienced a more ex- 
hilarating five minutes, but I must say that while you 
have the making of fairly good boxers, that is, some 
of you have, you are very deficient in knowledge of the 
manly art. During the winter I expect to give you 
some instruction in the art of self-defense, but only on 
one condition and that is that you learn to be good 
sports. The really good sport is always a gentleman. 
He will not strike a foul blow or take advantage of a 
weaker opponent. You young men have not been good 
sports. You have joined your forces and whipped 
teachers who were no more than a match for any one 
of you and have gloried in bullying the school. Now I 
wish to have an understanding. Have you had enough? 
If not we will settle this right now, but I promise you 
in advance that when I finish with you, you will not be 
able to attend school for several days. What do you 
say?" 

Bill Stevens spoke for the gang. His words came 
from between badly puffed lips, as he gazed at the 
teacher from eyes that were fast closing. "You're a 
he man, all right, though you don't look it. Whatever 
you say goes with this gang." 

That term of school worked a complete reformation 
on the bullies. They were diligent in attendance and 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 29 

most of tlicm made good progress. Bill Stevens after- 
ward went to college and became a leading business 
man in the city in which he located. In after life he 
often said: "That was the most painful and most prof- 
itable five minutes I ever spent in my life." 



The Downfall of Tomer oy 

In the legislative session of 1873 the senatorial elec- 
tion so overshadowed every other issue that little if 
anything is remembered of what was accomplished in 
the way of general legislation. The great question to 
be decided was the election or defeat of Samuel C. 
Pomeroy for the United States Senate. 

Pomeroy had served twelve years as senator and 
had a powerful political following, but he had also 
powerful and adroit opposition. It was less than eight 
years after the close of the Civil War and the veterans 
of that great conflict, still young and virile men, con- 
trolled the political and also, for the most part, all 
other enterprises of the state. Pomeroy was, as men 
went then, considered rather an old man, although only 
fifty-seven years of age, and still a man of powerful 
physique. During the noted dry year of 1860 he had 
been very active in securing aid for the Kansas set- 
tlers, especially corn, on account of which he was 
dubbed "Seed Corn Pomeroy," a play on the initials 
of his name. 

In that early day Kansas was divided politically 
into factions and they warred with each other with a 
bitterness unknown in these modern times. The oppo- 
nents of Pomeroy accused him of corruption and im- 
morality, while his friends and ardent supporters in- 
sisted that he was a paragon of virtue and an incor- 
ruptible patriot. The opposition was led by perhaps 



30 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the most adroit politician in Kansas at that time, 
Major Ben F. Simpson, who numbered among his lieu- 
tenants such men as W. A. Johnson, senator from 
Anderson County; Colonel John P. St. John, after- 
wards governor, and three times candidate for presi- 
dent on the Prohibition ticket ; Colonel Tom Moon- 
light, of Leavenworth, still the idol of the men who had 
followed him through his campaigns and battles ; 
Colonel A. M. York, of Montgomery; Colonel Ely, of 
Linn, and Captain George R. Peck, then a brilliant 
and rising young lawyer. Among other men of promi- 
nence in that legislature were Colonel Marsh Murdock, 
General Blair, N. C. McFarland, afterwards commis- 
sioner of the general land office, and Rev. I. S. Kallock, 
whose sincerity and morality were sometimes ques- 
tioned, but whose singular eloquence was always con- 
ceded. Pomeroy's campaign manager was Albert H. 
Horton, afterward himself a candidate for senator and 
for many years chief justice of the supreme court. 

While the fight was bitter, the supporters of Pome- 
roy, counting perhaps on the divisions among the op- 
position, seemed reasonably confident of success, but 
were not taking any chances if they knew it. There 
were numerous stories floating about of attempts to 
bribe the supporters of other candidates and finally 
a trap was laid for the senator, planned by Ben Simp- 
son, which resulted in the complete overthrow of Pome- 
roy, his retirement in disgrace from public life, and a 
narrow escape from a felon's cell. In pursuance of 
this plan, Colonel York called on Pomeroy at his room 
in the old Tefft House, located where the National now 
is, in the dead hour of the night and there bargained 
with him to sell his vote at the coming joint conven- 
tion of the Senate and House, then only two days off, 
in consideration of the payment of $8,000, to be paid 
$2,000 down, $5,000 the next day and $1,000 after 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 31 

the vote was cast. In accordance with this agreement, 
the story goes, Pomeroy paid over the $7,000. 

On January 29, 1873, the two houses met in joint 
convention. Old timers say that there was certain 
tenseness in the atmosphere, a foreboding of the com- 
ing storm. When the convention was called to order, 
Colonel York advanced to the front and laid on the 
table two packages of money which he claimed he had 
received from Pomeroy and with dramatic earnestness 
gave in detail to the convention his deal with the 
senator. That speech would have been lost to the world 
if it had not been for a young and brilliant reporter, 
afterwards one of the most successful lawyers in Kan- 
sas or the West — Colonel W. H. Rossington, who was 
reporting for the old Commonwealth. York had no 
written speech. Rossington recognized the news value 
of the same to his story of the sensational event, and 
sitting down at his desk wrote the following remarkable 
speech as that delivered by the senator from Mont- 
gomery : 

"Before I place in nomination the name of any man, I 
have a short explanation to make, and as it concerns all 
present and is of great importance to the state of Kansas, 
present and future, I desire the close attention of the mem- 
bers of the convention to what I have to say. Two weeks 
ago to-day I came to Topeka an avowed and earnest anti- 
Pomeroy man. I thought that in his defeat lay the regen- 
eration of the state and party and I cheerfully and enthusi- 
astically allied myself with the anti-Pomeroy element in the 
legislature. Grave charges had been made against Senator 
Pomeroy in connection with a certain letter to W. W. Ross. 
These charges had assumed a serious form in a meeting of 
the anti-Pomeroy caucus a few evenings ago when a man 
by the name of Clark exhibited $2,000 in twenty $100 bills, 
declaring that he had received the same from Pomeroy for 
signing a confession to the effect that he had forged the 
letter (to Ross) and the signature. I have no evidence as 



32 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

to the truth of these charges, but Mr. Pomeroy's name being 
associated with so many rumors of the same nature might 
give the report credence. 

"When I came here I had been waited on by friends of 
Mr. Pomeroy who plied me with arguments in favor of his 
preeminent fitness for the position and protestations of his 
innocence of the charges brought against him. I was asked 
several times to have an interview with Mr. Pomeroy and 
finally consented, provided this interview could take place 
in the presence of a third party. Mr. Pomeroy assented 
to the presence of one or any number of my friends. Ac- 
cordingly on Friday last I waited on Mr. Pomeroy and 
there, in the presence of Captain Peck and two others, we 
had a brief conversation. I put to him direct the question: 
'Did you or did you not write the letter signed with your 
name and directed to W. W. Ross having reference to cer- 
tain profits on Indian goods?' In reply he handed me the 
affidavits of J. B. Stewart and one signed by several citi- 
zens of Lawrence and asked me to read them and then say 
whether I thought he was the author of the letter. 'Mr. 
Pomeroy, you have not said whether you wrote that Ross 
letter.' I then said further to him: 'Mr. Pomeroy, you are 
either the most infamous scoundrel that ever trod the earth 
or the worst defamed man that ever stepped on Kansas soil.' 
Here the interview ended and, as I supposed, ended all rela- 
tions between myself and Mr. Pomeroy, but a day or two 
afterward I was importuned to accord Mr. Pomeroy a pri- 
vate interview. At the time it had become apparent that 
illicit and criminal means had been employed to secure Mr. 
Pomeroy's election and it became us as far as it lay in our 
power to circumvent them. I consulted with tried and 
trusted friends, Messrs. Simpson, Wilson, Johnson, and 
others as to the course I should pursue and upon their ad- 
vice I acted. I visited Mr. Pomeroy's room in the dark and 
secret recess of the Tefft House on Monday night and at 
that interview my vote was bargained for for a considera- 
tion of $8,000: $2,000 of which was paid that evening, 
$5,000 the next afternoon and a promise of the additional 
$1,000 when my vote had been cast in his favor. 

"I now, in the presence of this honorable body hand over 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 33 

the amount of $7,000 as I received it and ask that it be 
counted by the secretary. I ask that the money be used to 
defray the expenses of investigating and prosecuting S. C. 
Pomeroy for bribery and corruption. 

"I know that there are many present who may feel dis- 
posed to impugn my motives in this matter and decry the 
manner of my unearthing the deep and damning rascality, 
which has eaten like a plague spot into the fair name of 
this glorious young state. I am conscious that, standing 
here as I do a self-convicted bribe taker, I take upon my- 
self vicariously the odium that has made the name of Kan- 
sas and Kansas politics a hissing and a byword throughout 
the land. I do not undertake the defense of my act any 
further than it may convey with it its own justification. 
From every part of the state comes the demand thunder- 
toned and unanimous from the masses, whose will has so 
long been disregarded and oversloughed by the corrupt use 
of money by individuals and corporations, that we make a 
final and irrevocable end of corruptionists. In this matter 
I have had the unpleasant and unenviable sensation of 
handling pitch which defileth, but my feelings were second- 
ary to the common weal. In fact they were not taken into 
account. In a solemn exigency and forlorn hope of this 
kind I consider it a man's highest duty, in however ques- 
tionable guise his service comes, to man the breach and if 
such a course needs its atoning victim I would gladly offer 
myself a sacrifice. I promised in consideration of $8,000 
in hand paid to vote for Samuel C. Pomeroy and I now re- 
deem that pledge by voting for him to serve a term in the 
penitentiary not to exceed twenty years. 

"Mr. President and gentlemen, this is no new thing in 
the history of Kansas politics, I am pained to say. In 
every senatorial election has the same thing been repeated 
to our discomfiture and discredit, the will of the people as 
expressed at the ballot box has been defeated with money at 
this husting. This dishonored and dishonorable official ap- 
proaches me, gentlemen, with confidence in his ability to 
buy men's souls ; to prostitute their sacred honor. I have a 
name I am proud to say, that up to this time, with those 
who know me, has been free from reproach. Though a 



34 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

young man I have striven to lead a reputable life and to be 
an exemplary member of society as far as my limited in- 
fluence extends in deed as well as in thought. I have an 
aged mother who has been spared to bless me with her love. 
I have a wife and little ones to whom I hope to bequeath 
a name, no matter how obscure, they may have no reason to 
blush to hear pronounced; yet this corrupt old man comes 
to me and makes a bargain for my soul ; makes me a propo- 
sition which if accepted in the faith and spirit in which it is 
offered, will make my children go through life with hung 
down heads and burning cheeks at every mention of the 
name of him who begot them. Earth has no infamy more 
damnable than corruption, no criminal more to be execrated 
than he who would corrupt the representatives of the people 
to further his private interests. I demand, gentlemen, that 
the actions of Samuel C. Pomeroy be thoroughly examined 
and that the corruption money which lies on the table be the 
instrument of retribution in prosecuting that investigation. 
I further demand that the members of this body give to-day 
such an expression of their sentiments in this matter that 
the regeneration of this glorious young commonwealth may 
be proclaimed throughout the land, so that Kansas may 
stand erect and free among the states of the union, pure 
among the purest and honored throughout the world. 

"The statements I have made, gentlemen, are but partial 
and incomplete. The hour or two that I passed in that 
den of infamy in the Tefft House let in upon my mind such 
a flood of enlightenment as to the detestable practices of the 
Kansas politicians that I have no word to express the depth 
of degradation a once pure republican government has 
reached. The disclosures there made to me implicate some 
of the most prominent and respectable men in Kansas. I 
learned from Mr. Pomeroy that his spies and emissaries 
were working in our caucuses to sell us out. These disclo- 
sures I will not now make; they are sufficient to satisfy me 
that the most conscienceless, infamous betrayer of the trust 
reposed in him by the people of his state is Samuel C. 
Pomeroy. As to the truth of what I have stated, I stand in 
the presence of this august and honorable body of repre- 
sentatives of the sovereign people and before the Almighty 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 35 

ruler of the universe I solemnly declare that every word 
I have spoken is God's truth and nothing but the truth." 

The immediate effect of this speech was like a solar 
plexus blow to the supporters of Pomeroy. Some of 
his supporters rallied feebly to his defense but they 
could not reorganize his disrupted forces and amid in- 
tense excitement John J. Ingalls was elected to the 
United States Senate. 

Afterward a committee was appointed by the United 
States Senate to investigate the conduct of Pomeroy, 
with a view to expelling him from that body if the 
charges were found to be true. The special committee 
appointed to make the investigation was composed of 
Senators Frelinghuysen, Buckingham, Alcorn, Vickers 
and Allen G. Thurman. Pomeroy did not deny giving 
the money to Senator York, but claimed that he had 
given it to him to be turned over to a man by the name 
of Page who intended to start a national bank in Inde- 
pendence, and to whom Pomeroy had agreed to make a 
temporary loan. That a business transaction of this 
character should have been consummated at the hour 
of midnight or later, less than forty-eight hours before 
the vote on senator was to be taken, must have struck 
the members of the special committee as decidedly 
peculiar if true, but after taking a good deal of testi- 
mony the committee brought in a sort of Scotch verdict 
of guilty but not proven. Senator Thurman brought 
in a minority report in which he said that the testi- 
mony convinced him that the charges against Pomeroy 
were true. No doubt the fact that Pomeroy had been 
defeated for reelection and his term would end in a 
few weeks influenced the members of the committee. 

Pomeroy retired disgraced and broken. He lived, 
however, for eighteen years, during which time he saw 
the rise of his successor to a place of great prominence 



36 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

in the Senate, only finally to be swept out of office and 
out of power by the rise of a new political party in 
Kansas. About the time that Pomeroy, an old and 
feeble man, was on his deathbed, John J. Ingalls, the 
most brilliant representative ever sent to either house 
of Congress from Kansas, was watching his political 
sun set never to rise again. 

Senator York, the instrument of Pomeroy's undoing, 
whether he meant it or not, correctly indicated the 
effect on him personally of his act. His political ca- 
reer ended with that session of the Legislature. Many 
of the great newspapers condemned him even while 
admitting the need to expose political corruption. His 
motives were impugned and his act characterized as 
one of treachery. There is, however, little doubt that 
his course was influenced by a real desire to serve his 
state and nation. For a good many years he lived 
quietly in the little city of Independence, the law part- 
ner of Lyman U. Humphrey, afterward governor of 
the state. Tragedy seemed to be connected with the 
York family. A brother of the senator was one of the 
victims of the noted family of murderers, the Benders, 
about whose final fate there has always clung an air of 
uncertainty and mystery. 

If there was any need at this time for argument in 
favor of the election of United States senators by 
direct vote of the people it can be found by digging 
back into history of almost any of the old time elec- 
tions of senators by the Legislature. Some of those 
elections were untainted by fraud or even the suspicion 
of corruption, but many of them were smirched by deals 
which placed an ineffaceable stain on the name of our 
state and at that, our senatorial elections were per- 
haps as clean as those of the average state in the 
Union. 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 37 

When Newton Was the Wickedest Town 

It is difficult for one who knows only the Newton of 
to-day or the Newton of many years past, to believe 
that there ever was a time when it was called the 
"wickedest town in Kansas," which, I may say in pass- 
ing, was going some, for Kansas in the past has had 
some towns that in a competitive examination for 
wickedness would have given hell a neck and neck race. 
In the year 1871 the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 
road was extended west as far as Newton and, for that 
brief summer, it became the terminus of the Texas 
cattle trail. During the season some 40,000 head of 
cattle were driven up from the great plains of Texas 
and shipped on to the Kansas City and Chicago mar- 
kets from the then frontier town. 

For that season the pace in Newton was fast and 
furious. The town was full of saloons and dance 
houses and possibly never had a more reckless and des- 
perate element gathered in any town than filled these 
places of iniquity that hot and hectic season. 

A vivid description of the Texas cattle herder is 
found in the Topeka Commonwealth of August 15, 
1871. It is worth reproducing: 

"The Texas cattle herder is a character, the like of which 
can be found nowhere else on earth. Of course he is un- 
learned and illiterate, with but few wants and meager am- 
bition. His diet is principally navy plug and whisky and 
the occupation dearest to his heart is gambling. His dress 
consists of a flannel shirt with a handkerchief encircling his 
neck, butternut pants and a pair of long boots, in which are 
always the legs of his pants. His head is covered by a som- 
brero, which is a Mexican hat with a low crown and a brim 
of enormous dimensions. He generally wears a revolver 
on each side of his person, which he will use with as little 
hesitation on a man as on a wild animal. Such a character 



38 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

is dangerous and desperate and each one has generally 
'killed his man.' It was men of this class that composed 
the guerrilla bands like Quantrell's. There are good and 
honorable men among them, but the runaway boys and men 
who find it too hot for them even in Texas, join the cattle 
herders and constitute a large portion of them. They 
drink, swear, and fight, and life with them is a round of 
boisterous gayety and indulgence in sensual pleasures." 

It was these wild, reckless men who thronged the 
dance halls of Newton in that summer of 1871 and 
furnished the material and setting for this story of 
tragedy and murder. Arthur Delaney, known as Mike 
McCluskie, was in the employ of the railroad com- 
pany — a daring, fearless man, quiet, neither appar- 
ently seeking nor avoiding a fight, but handy with a gun 
and deadly in his aim. A few days before the fatal 
ninth of August, 1871, McCluskie had had an alterca- 
tion with a desperate gambler and gunman from Texas 
by the name of Baylor. McCluskie was the quicker of 
the two on the draw and Baylor died with his boots 
on. His Texas pals vowed revenge. The news was 
carried to McCluskie that his life was in peril and that 
the Texans, led by Hugh Anderson, intended to mur- 
der him if he went to the Tuttle dance hall. With a 
reckless disregard of danger, McCluskie walked into 
the dance hall and engaged in conversation with one 
of the gang that had determined on his murder. An- 
derson, the leader, drew his gun and with an oath shot 
McCluskie through the neck. As he fell, mortally 
wounded, McCluskie drew his own gun and, half rising 
from the floor, pulled the trigger. The cartridge failed 
to explode, but the dying man, with two more bullets 
in his body, pulled the trigger again with all his dying 
strength, and this time wounded but did not kill the 
Texan. The other Texans opened fire on the dying 
man. Suddenly, a frail youth, in the last stages of 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 39 

consumption, a friend of McCluskie, with the fighting 
name of Riley, appeared on the scene, shut the door 
of the dance hall, as the story goes, to prevent egress, 
and then coolly went into action. His gun barked 
once, twice, thrice, and yet again and again, and at 
each crash and red spurt of flame a Texan went down, 
until six men had fallen dead or wounded. By some 
strange freak of fate, this man who, apparently think- 
ing that death was very near in any event, and who 
seemed weary of life and ready to throw it away in 
revenging his dead friend, was unharmed. 

It was the greatest killing that Newton ever had and 
about the last. The better element of the new town, 
shocked by the tragedy, determined that the dance halls 
must go. 

The next spring the railroad moved south to the 
town of Wichita. Newton settled down to an orderly 
and rather humdrum existence. The days of the cattle 
trail, the Texas herders, the dance halls, with their 
wild orgies, the bloody battles, the men weltering in 
their blood, all became a sort of ghastly memory. 
Few, perhaps none, of the men and women who lived 
in Newton in those wild days, are still alive, but the 
temporary sojourner in the town, as he strolls about 
between trains, may have pointed out to him the place 
where the dance hall stood and where the midnight 
battle was waged when Newton was young and had 
the unenviable reputation of being the wickedest town 
in Kansas. 

An International Episode 

During the year 1871 or '72 a Scotchman named 
George Grant, born near Aberdeen, came to Kansas 
and made a deal with the Union Pacific, then known 
as the Kansas Pacific, railroad by which he acquired 



40 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

title to a large amount of railroad land in Ellis County, 
variously estimated at from 100,000 to 500,000 acres. 
Just how much land he did get is uncertain but it was 
a large tract and bought on most favorable terms so 
far as Grant was concerned, who was evidently pos- 
sessed of a good deal of Scotch thrift and canniness in 
driving a bargain. The railroad company had re- 
ceived a vast land grant from the Government and the 
managers were anxious to have the country settled as 
soon as possible so as to make business for the road. 
George Grant bought the land at the rate of fifty cents 
per acre and did not even have to pay cash down at 
that. His agreement was to bring out a large colony 
of high grade Englishmen with money, who would 
settle on the land and stock it with blooded cattle, 
horses, and sheep. 

The bargain having been closed, the enterprising 
advertising agent of the railroad proclaimed to the 
world that a vast tract of land had been sold to a 
British nobleman, Sir George Grant, knighted by the 
queen, a man of almost boundless wealth, who had de- 
cided to establish on the fertile prairies of Kansas an 
estate like those of the landed gentry of "Merry Eng- 
land." 

As a matter of fact, the Scotchman had never been 
Idowered with a title in the old world. He was a silk 
merchant who had been reasonably prosperous in trade 
and who saw a speculation in the Kansas land. The 
title, however, was a good advertisement. Kansas had 
had no genuine titled noblemen among her citizenship, 
and while the early Kansas man paid little deference to 
titles, he rather liked to say that an English lord was 
so enamored that he left his ancestral halls to settle 
out in western Kansas. The title also helped about 
getting the English squires, who do dote on titles, 
interested, and so it came about that Sir George man- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 41 

aged to create quite an interest among these British 
sires who were looking for locations for their sons. 
Also, it may be said that the Scotchman managed to 
do very well in the real estate business, selling the land, 
for which he had promised to pay the railroad com- 
pany fifty cents per acre, to the Englishmen for as 
high as $15 per acre in some cases. He also built him 
an English villa, which was, in turn, press agented, 
and named the town he organized Victoria, in honor 
of the British queen. 

In order to satisfy the religious proclivities of the 
colonists, he built a church which was duly dedicated 
by Bishop Vail of blessed memory. He also brought 
considerable blooded stock and several thousand sheep 
to graze upon the succulent grasses. For a time the 
plan worked with remarkable success. At one time 
there were two thousand Britishers in Sir George's 
colony, according to estimates of the truthful re- 
porters. Maybe there were not so many, but there 
was a respectable number. Most of them were a fail- 
ure as pioneers, so far as developing the country was 
concerned, but they had a really delightful time, hunt- 
ing wolves and jack rabbits, riding to the chase dressed 
in typical English fashion, with their high topped 
boots and ridiculous little caps, and at evening gather- 
ing in the saloon run by one Tommy Drum, where they 
"stayed themselves with flagons," imbibed large quan- 
tities of "Scotch and soda" and with large volume of 
sound if not with melody, sang English songs. One 
of the favorites of these was a poetical description of 
a shipwreck, each stanza ending with the sad refrain 
"The ship went down with the fair young bride a 
thousand miles from shore." 

It was while in a lachrymose state of mind, the result 
of frequent irrigation, that one of the young English 
"remittance" men became so wrought up over the 



42 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

tragedy which happened to the "fair young bride" that 
he hurled a bottle through the large pier glass, which 
was Tommy Drum's delight and pride and which, when 
Fort Hays was an important military post, had often 
reflected the images of Generals Sherman, Sheridan, 
Custer and Phil Kearney, as they lined up in front of 
the bar and took their "regulars" of whisky straight, 
or perhaps with a dash of lemon to modify the rough- 
ness of the drink. The breaking of the glass caused 
Drum to run about in circles shouting "By the bolt !" 
"By the bolt !" which was his nearest approach to pro- 
fanity. Nobody knew just what the expression meant, 
but it served to relieve Tommy's surcharged feelings 
when ordinary language did not fill the bill and for that 
matter it was more harmless and fully as sensible as 
any form of profanity. 

It was at the thirst parlor of Tommy Drum, where 
occurred the international episode about which this 
story is written. 

It was the evening of the Glorious Fourth of July 
and a number of the British scions and Americans 
had gathered and indulged in numerous potations, until 
they had reached the state where they were ready for 
argument, tears, or battle, when one of the Americans 
happened to remember that it was the natal day of 
our republic. Filled with highballs and patriotism, he 
proposed that they should sing "The Star-Spangled 
Banner." 

The subjects of the queen objected. They didn't 
deem it fitting for Englishmen to sing the national air 
of this "blarsted republic." The only national song 
they would sing, they declared, was "God Save the 
Queen." For a time the Americans argued the matter 
in a bibulous sort of way, but the argument soon be- 
came heated. It was considered an international ques- 
tion and as the Britishers continued obdurate the 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 43 

Americans felt that it was up to them to uphold the 
honor of their country. 

So the ruction commenced and waxed fast and furi- 
ous. The Britishers put up a game fight and left their 
marks on the countenances of their foes, but they were 
outnumbered. Now and then a well-directed blow from 
an American fist or chair or heavy bottle wielded with 
vigor put a subject of the queen out of the fight and 
then the battle became more one sided than before. A 
good deal of the saloon furniture was broken up and 
nearly every countenance, both British and American, 
bore marks of the conflict before it was ended by the 
American forces throwing the last of the Englishmen 
into the cellar. 

The victors were standing guard over the stairway 
leading down to the basement when the late Judge Jim 
Reeder appeared upon the scene and asked what all 
the row was about. 

The leader of the Americans, who was carrying a 
beautiful black eye and a somewhat damaged nose as 
souvenirs of the conflict, stated the case. "Thesh 
here Britishers," he said thickly, " 'fuse to shing 'Star- 
Spangled Banner,' an' thish is the glorish Fourth July 
— insis' on shingin' that dam British song 'God Shave 
th' Queen' — wouldn't stan' for it. Been a hell of a 
fight, but can't no Britisher inshult Star-Spangled 
Banner.' " 

Judge Reeder asked for a chance to talk with the 
imprisoned Englishmen, but found them standing 
firmly, though battered, by their national anthem. 

"Gentlemen," he said, "there should be peace between 
the mother country and ours. I have a proposition to 
make. Let the Americans sing the 'Star-Spangled Ban- 
ner' and the Englishmen join in. After that we will 
permit the Englishmen to sing 'God Save the Queen.' 
Giving you loyal Americans the right to sing first is 



44 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

an acknowledgment on their part that our glorious 
republic takes the precedence and then as a matter of 
courtesy they can be permitted to sing their national 
air." 

At first the Americans were not disposed to yield. 
They insisted that they had whipped the blamed British 
and, as the leader of the Americans expressed it, "To 
the vic'or b'longs th' spoils." On the other hand, the 
British though temporarily overpowered were still 
game and unwilling to yield anything to their foes. 

After much argument Judge Reeder induced both 
sides to agree to his suggestion. The badly battered 
Englishmen were permitted to come up out of the 
cellar. A drink was taken by all and the Americans 
were told to go on with their singing. 

The leader started out bravely in a somewhat ragged 
voice : "O shay c'n you shee, by zhee dawn's er'y light." 
Here his recollection failed him and a comrade whose 
lip had been cut open during the festivities suggested 
disgustedly that "any fool ought to know better'n to 
shing 'Star-Spangled Banner' to the tune of 'John 
Brown's Body Lies a Mouldering in zhe Grave.' " 

"Maybe," said the leader with bibulous gravity and 
indignation, "if you know so much 'bout shingin' you 
c'n shing this yourself." 

The other American tried it but fell down on the 
second line. A number of others tried it but all failed 
either because they didn't know the words or the tune 
and most of them knew neither one. 

They finally all gave it up and Judge Reeder said: 
"Well, gentlemen, you have had a fair chance to uphold 
the honor of our country in song and failed. It is no 
more than fair that the Englishmen have their chance. 
Proceed, gentlemen, to sing your national air, 'God 
Save the Queen.' " 

The leader of the defeated party smiled as well as 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 45 

his battered lips would permit and started in on the 
British anthem. He started, that was all. At the end 
of the first line his memory completely failed him and 
besides he was off the tune. Other loyal subjects of 
the Queen had no better success and finally gave it up. 

Satisfied at last, the late antagonists then lined up 
at the bar, imbibed a drink by way of reconciliation, 
chipped in to pay for the furniture destroyed, and 
parted with mutual assurances that they had spent a 
most enjoyable evening. 

Sir George Grant died in 1878, at the premature age 
of fifty-six, and was buried close by the church he had 
built. Hot winds and crop failures discouraged the 
colonists and they faded away. Their places were 
taken by a colony of subjects of the late Czar of 
Russia who have lived and prospered and grown rich 
where the followers of Sir George failed. Near the 
little church by which lies the body of Sir George 
Grant, has been erected one of the largest and most 
magnificent churches west of the Missouri River, paid 
for out of the earnings of these erstwhile Russian peas- 
ants who came to this country, poor in purse, but en~ 
dowed with the industry, patience, and endurance nec- 
essary to make successful pioneers. 



The Looting of Harper County 

In the spring of 1873 a trio of scoundrels met in 
Baxter Springs for the purpose of organizing a con- 
spiracy to plunder, that would be free from the ordi- 
nary risks incurred by the common thief, highwayman, 
or burglar and at the same time yield a greater finan- 
cial reward. The conspirators were a couple of shyster 
lawyers of small practice and shady reputation, named 
( W. H. Horner and A. W. Rucker and a thug and des- 



46 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

perado by the name of William Boyd, who had been 
elected to the office of mayor by the lawless element 
that at that particular time was in control of the 
town. Boyd was a coarse, brutal murderer and gam- 
bler, who had killed the city marshal in cold blood a 
short time before, but had managed to get clear on 
the plea of self-defense. He was known as a crooked 
gambler and lived in open adultery with a negro mis- 
tress, but seems to have held the leadership and back- 
ing of the tough element, while the reputable citizens 
of the town were terrorized, held either by fear of per- 
sonal violence if they opposed Boyd, or by the dread 
that they would be ruined in a business way if they 
did not cater to the lawless element. It was, no doubt, 
the crooked brain of Horner that planned the iniquity 
the three were to put on foot, but Boyd probably fur- 
nished the funds necessary to carry it out. 

The plan was the fraudulent organization of Harper 
County. Horner was not particular about the loca- 
tion of the robbery, but Harper happened to furnish 
the most convenient territory. He assured the other 
conspirators that the plan was not only feasible but 
entirely safe and certain. All they had to do was to 
get up a petition alleging that there were at least 600 
bona fide inhabitants in the county to be organized, 
have a census taken showing the names of such inhab- 
itants, and present the same to the governor. Every 
thing would be regular on its face. The governor 
would issue his proclamation setting forth that a peti- 
tion and census duly verified according to law had 
been presented and certain persons had been duly 
selected for county officers. 

It was easy to gather up a gang of loafers from the 
Baxter Springs saloons and the party made up of con- 
spirators and bums traveled westward. One of the 
loafers who was induced to join the party and repre- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 47 

sent the "bona fide" inhabitants, afterward told the 
story. He said that after they had traveled westward 
for several days Horner announced that they had 
reached Harper County. "And now," said Horner, 
"we will proceed to organize this county." The papers 
were already drawn up. The petition with 600 signa- 
tures, copied from Baxter Springs hotel registers, was 
ready to forward to the governor. Everything pro- 
ceeded as merrily as a marriage feast, or perhaps a 
better simile would be the feasts of buzzards gathered 
about the carrion. The looters held an election in 
which not only Horner, Rucker and Boyd were duly 
elected to office but each of the loafers was given of- 
ficial honors. Horner was selected as representative 
of the county and in the regular session of 1874, al- 
though living at Baxter Springs, he brazenly appeared 
as representative from Harper County, was duly sworn 
in and served through the session. 

The organization worked out as Horner had pre- 
dicted. The petition with its forged signatures was 
presented to the governor, the proclamation was duly 
issued, and on August 20, 1873, Harper County was 
declared duly organized. Then the real purpose of 
the conspirators was put into execution and reaping 
of the harvest of loot began. Twenty-five thousand 
dollars in bonds were voted to build a court house and 
$15,000 funding bonds were issued. I believe the Leg- 
islature legalized the issue and then Horner gaily pro- 
ceeded to unload the bonds on the '"innocent pur- 
chaser." It is said that the $40,000 in bonds were 
sold for $30,000, and with his loot in his possession 
Horner went back to Baxter Springs to settle with his 
fellow conspirators. He undertook to give them the 
double cross, but Boyd had set detectives on his track 
when he went to St. Louis to sell the bonds, and knew 
the price for which they had been sold. 



48 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

The story is that Horner took out of his pockets 
$15,000 cash, divided it into three parts and declared 
that he had been obliged to dispose of the bonds at a 
heavy discount and had as a matter of fact only re- 
ceived $15,000. At this point Boyd drew his gun, 
thrust it in the face of Horner, and after loading him 
with all the opprobrious and vile epithets he had in 
stock, told him that unless he came across with the 
other $15,000 he would kill him. Horner had every 
reason to believe that Boyd would not hesitate to do 
what he said and rapidly dug up the other $15,000 
saying that his talk about $15,000 was just a joke. 
Boyd soon after left the town, but Horner and Rucker 
did not even have the grace to go away where their 
villainy would not be known. Rucker blossomed out 
as a loan shark, loaning money at from three to ten 
per cent per month. Horner's seat in the Legislature 
was declared vacant and the organization of Harper 
County a fraud, after all the damage had been done, 
but none of the thieves were punished for their crimes. 
The bar-room loafers who had been used by the con- 
spirators complained considerably when they learned 
that Horner, Boyd, and Rucker had pulled down $10,- 
000 apiece, but that availed them nothing. 

The astonishing thing to me, after all, is that the 
thieves were satisfied with stealing $40,000. When 
they contemplated what was done in the adjoining 
county of Barber, they probably concluded that they 
were pikers. It would have been as easy to steal $100,- 
000 as $40,000. Also, it is difficult to understand how 
the courts in these fraudulent bond cases could hold 
that the buyers were innocent purchasers. The very 
fact that the St. Louis parties who purchased these 
bonds paid only $30,000 for them was prima facie 
evidence that they knew the bonds were fraudulent. 
It is also very difficult to believe that the governor did 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 49 

not know when he consented to the organization that 
the whole thing was a gross fraud, a monstrous 
iniquity. 

The Legislature of 187 ^ 

The Legislature of 1874 met while the country was 
still in the grip of the panic of 1873. Hard times, as 
usual, had their political reaction and Kansas was 
being washed by the waves of reform. While the ma- 
jority of the Legislature was nominally Republican, 
the reformers held the balance of power at least in the 
lower house and the men who talked loudest against 
the "money power'* and harangued the longest against 
the burdens of taxation, gathered the biggest audiences 
and received the most applause. There was even threat 
of a new party, but the Republicans managed to keep 
control and elect the officers. 

There was trouble, too, in the state house. The 
state treasurer, Hayes, was accused of misappropria- 
tion of public funds and was impeached and forced to 
resign. Hayes was an old man, probably incompetent 
to perform the duties of state treasurer, but was not 
a scoundrel. All this, however, added to the general 
dissatisfaction on account of hard times and in that 
sort of an atmosphere the Legislature convened. Cap- 
tain McEachron, of Cloud County, was elected speaker 
and Captain Alex R. Banks, chief clerk of the house. 

As a measure of economy the reform members op- 
posed the election of a chaplain, saying that the cost 
of each prayer amounted to the price of fifteen bushels 
of corn. It was proposed to save that amount by 
inviting local ministers to pray for nothing, or to have 
such members of the house as had at divers and sundry 
times undertaken to preach, do the praying for the 
house. As the local ministers did not show any enthu- 



50 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

siasm about donating their services to intercede with 
the Lord on behalf of the Legislature at nothing per, 
it was proposed by some members that the chief clerk 
be required to read the Lord's Prayer, at the opening 
of each day's session. This proposal, however, was 
promptly voted down and the house was left without 
any one to offer up a short and snappy petition to the 
Throne of Grace. 

Captain Henry King was at the time editor of the 
Commonwealth, and I might say in passing, that few 
if any of the great dailies of the country had abler 
editors. He made the incident of the chaplaincy the 
subject of an editorial which I think deserves a place 
among the literary and humorous gems of Kansas 
writers. 

"The Kansas House of Representatives/' said the edi- 
torial, "is without a chaplain and is naturally in a very bad 
way about it. We have never tried being a representative, 
but if we did we should feel the need of a chaplain to 
pray for us. 

"Reform, which seems to emulate the gaunt, bone-picking 
parsimony of the ridiculous silhouette, has now done its 
worst by depriving the scrimped and perquisiteiess legis- 
lators of their necessary rations of grace. 

"They can do without postage stamps; they might eke 
out a hardtack and herring existence by giving up their 
passes and cutting off their mileage, but it is the refinement 
of cruelty to stop their prayers. When the Legislature 
assembled and organized the first and most important duty 
of the House (the Senate being provided with one) was to 
select a chaplain. It has been customary to avoid the 
appearance of sectarian partiality by inviting the clergy 
of the city to alternate in making a prayer, for which the 
state paid the very moderate figure of $3 per invocation. 
Some reformer moved that the House do without prayers 
this year of reform, unless they could be made gratuitously, 
for each prayer cost about fifteen bushels of corn. 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 51 

"Now a man, we hold, can pray for himself gratuitously 
and in that prayer he can include the whole world if he 
wants' to, but it is something different to pray against the 
current, so to speak, in behalf of the Legislature. Mr. 
Silas Wegg very properly charged Mr. Boffin extra for 
'dropping into poetry,' owing to the wear and tear on his 
finer feelings thus induced. On the same principle a clergy- 
man should be paid for the lacerations of his faith, conse- 
quent on praying for a Legislature. It is not, therefore, 
to be wondered at that no clergyman felt it incumbent on 
himself to pray for the Legislature. The device of calling 
on such members of the Legislature as had formerly done 
clergical work proved a failure, as it deserved. To ask a 
man to aid in making the laws and pray for divine aid in 
their fabrication was as if a blacksmith should be asked to 
forge a bar of iron and blow the bellows at the same time. 
The dual function of the legislator and the parson can not, 
as there are many precedents to prove, subsist in a single 
individual simultaneously. 

"The last resort of these poor statute makers, left 
prayerless, was to call on the clerk to read every morning 
from his desk the Lord's Prayer. This was a very thin 
illusion of sanctity to be sure, but like Mercutio's wound 
it might serve. We need not, we hope, assure the members 
of the House who promptly, and we think unadvisedly, 
voted down the proposition, that there are very many ex- 
cellent things in the Lord's Prayer, and it is free from the 
unpleasant personalities that sometimes slip into impromptu 
invocations. It asks for the coming of the heavenly king- 
dom on earth and prostrates the devout utterer before the 
will of a merciful Providence. It asks for all a portion 
of the daily bread that sustains nature and the bread of 
life which strengthens and stimulates the spirit. It asks 
that our debts be forgiven as we forgive our debtors and 
contains the essence of all prayers, the continual cry of 
the truly devout and penitent spirit in the words that 
should dwell ever upon the lips of every man, whether 
lawmaker or law observer: 'Lead us not into temptation 
but deliver us from evil.' 

"Now, why should not the chief clerk repeat this prayer 



52 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

in default of some one to offer up a scientific $3 devotional 
exercise? If the general worldliness appearance of that 
young gentleman were sacrificed, with his secular and se- 
ductive mutton-chop whiskers, and his presence brought up 
to the proper clerical standard by the addition of a white 
choker and shad belly coat, his resonant, clerical voice 
modulated to the devotional monotone, we cannot see why 
the most graceless legislator might not exclaim with 
Hamlet, 'Sweet Banks, in thy orisons be all my sins re- 
membered.' 

"But the lower house is without a chaplain or even the 
shadows of the substance, which we have shown might be 
produced by getting the chief clerk up in clerical mas- 
querade. It is not only a cruel deprivation to the members, 
but will, we are afraid, have its influence upon the laws." 



This same Legislature seriously considered a bill to 
reduce the salary of the governor from $3,000, as it 
was at that time, to $2,000 ; also to reduce the salary 
of the secretary of state to $1,800, the salary of the 
state auditor to $1,500; the salary of the attorney 
general to $1,200; the salary of the state superintend- 
ent to $1,500; the salary of the judges of the district 
courts to $2,000, and the salary of the warden of the 
penitentiary to $1,500. 

The Commonwealth vigorously opposed this bill and 
no doubt did much to kill it. Instead of reducing the 
salaries as indicated, the Commonwealth declared that 
the governor should receive a salary of $5,000 ; that 
the secretary of state and state auditor should receive 
$3,000 each ; the attorney general $4,000 and the state 
treasurer $10,000 per annum. At the close of the 
session the editor of the Commonwealth roasted the 
Legislature to a deep rich brown, declaring that it had 
accomplished nothing worth while, that the men who 
had yelled loudest for economy and reform had really 
done nothing, and had not seriously tried to do any- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 53 

thing, but had been "grandstanding" to gain popular 
favor and applause. But if the Legislature was a 
calamity, it was the forerunner of worse to come. 
Within three or four months after the adjournment 
clouds of locusts that darkened the sun came flying 
from the west and devoured every green thing from 
the sage brush lands of Colorado to the turgid flood 
of the Missouri. And Kansas, taking a melancholy 
pride in adversity, advertised herself to the world as 
the native habitation of the grasshopper and, even 
when prosperity had returned to her borders and her 
bins were bursting with the fruit of her golden har- 
vests, painted the hopper rampant upon her banners. 



The Fight at Adobe Walls 

Among the treasured collections of Dodge City there 
used to be a magnificent war bonnet with its trailing 
plume of eagle feathers and other accouterments of an 
Indian chief. Why the Historical Society has not 
secured these historic relics I do not know, nor do I 
know where they are at this time. They were memen- 
toes of one of the most thrilling and desperate fights 
that marked the losing struggle of the red men to hold 
their hunting grounds against the aggressive and ruth- 
less incroachment of the Anglo-Saxon. In the Pan- 
handle of Texas, 175 miles southwest of Dodge City, 
there had been built, while that was still a part of 
Mexico's domain, a rude fort of sun-dried brick, called 
adobe. Just who built the fort is not definitely re- 
corded, but in any event after Texas attained her in- 
dependence and perhaps before that time, the old fort 
was permitted to fall into a state of decay, and it 
only figures in this story because it marked the loca- 
tion of the historic battle in which a little band of 



54* WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Kansas buffalo hunters fought through a long hot June 
day against an overwhelming force of the bravest 
warriors of the plains. 

The year 1874 was the year of the greatest slaugh- 
ter of the buffalo. To speak of the killing of buf- 
falo as a hunt, was a misnomer. It was simply a wan- 
ton destruction of these poor beasts which covered the 
prairies with their countless multitudes. The Pan- 
handle of Texas was that year the favorite hunting or 
killing ground and a company of Kansas hunters num- 
bering, according to the various accounts still extant, 
from fourteen to twenty-eight, had gone down there 
that spring of 1874 to have a part in the slaughter. 
The wild Indians of the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache 
tribes resented this invasion of their favorite hunting 
grounds and with considerable reason, for they knew 
that at the rate the white men were slaughtering the 
buffalo the vast herds would soon be extinct. The 
Indian never killed buffalo for the mere sport of kill- 
ing; that was characteristic of the white and sup- 
posedly civilized and Christianized white man. The 
Indian killed to supply his needs for food and furs as 
he had done for generations, but there had been no 
diminution of the great herds and would not have been 
until yet if the white hunters had not come. In all 
the history of the world there has never been a more 
cruel, wasteful, and needless slaughter of animals than 
that which in the short space of three years practically 
exterminated the buffalo. 

So it is not remarkable that when the white hunters 
came down to the Panhandle country and established a 
trading post and began the wholesale slaughter, the 
Indian warriors were filled with anger and a desire for 
vengeance. Among the Comanches was a medicine man 
who had acquired great influence over the men of the 
tribe. His power was not confined, it seemed, to his 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 55 

own tribe. He was regarded as a mighty medicine man 
by the Kiowas, Arapahoes, and Apaches. He made 
these warriors believe that by the use of a certain kind 
of war paint and by his occult powers he could render 
them invisible to the eyes of the white men and immune 
to the bullets from their guns. It would, therefore, 
be an easy task to surprise this band of hunters and 
kill them without the loss of any Indians. When the 
attack was made and the Indians were mowed down 
by the deadly fire of the white hunters, protected by 
the thick walls of their adobe houses, the minds of the 
Indians must have been disabused of the belief in the 
powers of Minimic, the medicine man, but still they 
fought with a reckless daring which excited the admira- 
tion of their foes. 

It is hard for a Kansas man to acknowledge that 
whisky and a saloon ever served a good purpose, but 
it must be said that if it had not been for the thirst 
of the hunters which kept them in the saloon which had 
been organized for temporary purposes by one Jack 
Hanahan, and the giving way of one of the supports 
which held up the roof of the frontier thirst parlor, 
the Indian surprise would in all probability have been 
complete; the hunters, post trader, and drink dis- 
penser would all have been massacred and the reputa- 
tion of Minimic, the medicine man, would have been 
sustained. The night was far spent and the final round 
of drinks in Hanahan's saloon was about to be called 
for, when it was discovered that the center post sup- 
porting the dirt-covered roof was giving way and all 
hands set in to prevent the impending catastrophe. 
It was considerable of a job and by the time a new 
support had been placed and a couple of men sent up 
on the roof to shovel off some of the dirt and relieve 
the pressure on the support, the early dawn was gild- 
ing the far reaches of the prairie. 



56 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

The Indians were slipping up through the tall grass 
in the dawn to the attack, when in the early light they 
were discovered by the men on the roof. The alarm 
was given and the Indians, seeing that they had been 
discovered, rushed with a blood-curdling yell to the 
onslaught. Careless or indifferent to danger, some of 
the hunters were sleeping out in the open and three 
of them were killed before they could get into the 
shelter of the thick-walled houses. Those who did get 
inside, however, were reasonably well protected, the 
walls were arrow and bullet proof and they had been 
provided with loopholes, through which the men could 
shoot with comparative safety. At the head of the 
oncoming warriors rode the half-breed Comanche chief 
Quanna, and with him rode the proud and gallant sub- 
chief, the younger Stone Calf, nephew of the old chief 
Stone Calf. On his head he wore his great war bonnet, 
with its plume of eagle feathers reaching almost to 
his ankles. His body fantastically painted, his wrists 
and ankles ornamented with circlets of silver or copper, 
he was as proud and valiant a warrior as ever rode 
to battle, a born leader of savage men. 

Among the hunters in the adobe house were some of 
the best marksmen of the plains. They barred the 
door with sacks of flour from the post store, and this 
precaution saved their lives. The Indians rode up 
recklessly and, whirling their horses, backed them vio- 
lently against the door. If it had not been for the 
flour barricade, the weight of the horses would have 
broken down the door. Inside were the hunters with 
their huge buffalo guns. They held their fire until the 
onrushing savages were within thirty yards, and then 
through the loopholes poured a murderous volley, 
which piled the ground with Indian dead. The In- 
dians retreated before the hail of death, but came on 
again and again. The medicine man, Minimic, rode 



y 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 57 

about among the braves on a pony which he had be- 
daubed with paint to make it immune to the hunters* 
bullets, and exposed himself recklessly until his pony 
was shot down under him. The young chief, with mag- 
nificent daring, rode alone through the deadly zone of 
fire right up to one of the port holes, through which 
he thrust a revolver and emptied it into the room 
where the hunters were. A bullet laid him low, des- 
perately, perhaps mortally, wounded, but still uncon- 
quered he put his pistol to his head and blew out his 
brains. 

All day long the battle raged and even then the 
Indians did not cease their attack entirely. Quanna, 
the half-breed chief, fell, desperately wounded, but it 
was only when reinforcements came for the beleaguered 
men that the warriors sullenly drew off, leaving the 
ground about the adobe house covered with their dead. 
Of the Kansas hunters four were killed and one or two 
others were wounded. The number of Indians who 
participated in the attack was variously estimated at 
from 500 to 900. Probably both estimates were ex- 
aggerated, but there is no doubt the hunters were out- 
numbered fifteen or twenty to one. In no fight on the 
plains was greater coolness or daring displayed, either 
in attack or defense, than was shown at the fight of 
the adobe walls on that hot summer day of 1874. 

The Kansas Runnymede 

About forty-five years ago an enterprising English- 
man who had located in Kansas, evolved a new scheme 
in high, not to say, frenzied finance. Ned Turnley was 
an original thinker by nature and his native tendency 
was accentuated by the Kansas atmosphere and asso- 
ciations. 

He knew a good deal about the wayward sons of 



58 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

British sires who had managed to accumulate money, 
which the young men desired principally to scatter 
abroad. The English sires had a good many anxious 
moments on account of these sons. The young fellows 
were hard riders, hard drinkers, and dead game sports, 
but when it came to matters of business they dis- 
played a remarkable indifference and positive reluc- 
tance to do anything that savored of toil. 

One of the ambitions of an English squire is to be 
known as a country gentleman, the proprietor of broad 
acres, from which he can garner a comfortable income 
while he is regarded with a degree of deference by his 
tenants. Ned Turnley went to these rich English 
squires with a proposition. 

"Out on the great wide and fertile plains of the 
central part of the United States," said Turnley, 
"there is the opportunity to develop these sons of 
yours and build up a rich English colony which will be 
an honor to the British empire and a credit to your 
family." He was a bully good conversationalist, was 
Ned Turnley, and he knew how to appeal to these rich 
Englishmen. He painted a word picture of a sunset 
land with a soil as rich as any in the tight little isle, 
where title might be obtained to many square leagues, 
on which would graze vast herds of cattle and which, 
turned up by the plow and sown with grain, would yield 
unlimited harvests. What these sons of theirs needed, 
he urged, was to take a course in farming and stock 
raising under an able and experienced instructor. 
They were dowered with good blood, as he assured 
their fathers, and by that assurance he appealed pow- 
erfully to the vanity of the sires. All the young men 
needed was the opportunity to settle down and learn 
the ways of the broad prairies and the business of 
cattle raising. His proposition was to take these 
young bloods to Kansas and train them for the sum of 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 59 

£500 each, paid in hand. Of course the English sires 
would have to take care of the young bloods' expenses 
while the schooling was going on. The fact that Turn- 
ley was able to put such a plan across and actually 
secured one hundred of these wild young Englishmen 
for his colony, marked him as a financial genius and 
one of the greatest confidence men of his time. 

In order to get the consent of the young bloods to 
come to the West, it was necessary to tell a different 
story. To them Turnley pictured a land which was 
the paradise of the hunter and his hounds. He told 
of the vast stretches of prairie, unvexed by the plow 
and unhampered by settlers, where wolves and antelope 
Were plenty and the great jack rabbit furnished better 
sport than the English hare. To them there was no 
talk of tilling the soil or watching over the lowing 
herds. His story appealed mightily to these young 
Englishmen. They were fully as anxious to come as 
their fathers were to have them come and so with his 
colony of one hundred, and in his pockets a quarter of 
a million of good English bank notes, Turnley began 
his unique experiment. The locality selected was the 
beautiful valley of the Chicaskia, fifty miles southwest 
of Wichita and on the border of Harper County, Kan- 
sas. Here he founded the town of Runnymede, in honor 
of the historic spot so dear to Englishmen, where the 
stout barons wrested the charter of British freedom 
from a reluctant king. 

For a good many months the young Englishmen 
found the sport fully up to expectations. The best 
kennels of England were drawn upon to furnish deep- 
voiced hounds and blooded chargers were imported for 
the mounts. Joyously and recklessly the sons of proud 
English sires rode to the chase. A large hotel was 
erected at the new town of Runnymede to accommodate 
them and here night after night they held high car- 



60 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

nival and pledged each other's health in sparkling 
champagne or good, old foaming English ale. 

Horse races, cock fights, and sparring matches were 
the order of the day and night. There was some pre- 
tense of farming, but that was done by proxy. The 
young Englishmen were too busy having a good time to 
do any real work. 

It must be said for them that they were good sports, 
too. Someone arranged a bout with a local prize 
fighter of Wichita named Paddy Shea. He took on 
one of the young Englishmen who was a willing soul, 
but no match for the prize fighter in the fistic art. 
Paddy knocked the Englishman out and it was several 
minutes before he awoke from his dream. When he 
came out of his trance and learned how Paddy had 
done it he was so pleased that he insisted on present- 
ing the fighter with a handsome present, just to show 
that he "was a good sport, don't you know." 

On one occasion there was a horse race at the new 
town of Harper and the English made a winning of 
$1,500. They immediately took possession of the lead- 
ing booze dispensary, helped themselves to everything 
drinkable there was about the place and insisted on 
everybody in town partaking of their hospitality. By 
morning there was nothing weaker than sulphuric acid 
left in the drug store. The revelers presented the 
$1,500 won on the race to the proprietor of the booze 
emporium and departed joyously, ready for further 
adventure. 

After a time the fathers back in England began to 
grow weary of sending remittances. Probably also 
they received some reports of what was actually going 
on and sent for their sons to come home. So the glory 
of the Kansas Runnymede waned and the Turnley 
colony became a memory. 

Twenty years ago or such a matter a railroad, the 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 61 

Kansas City, Mexico & Orient, was built through the 
old town of Runnymede and where there had been 
revelry by night and also by day, there was established 
a new and quiet village. It still bears the historic 
name of Runnymede, but of the colony of hard-riding 
and hard-drinking young Englishmen there remain no 
reminders except a single grave where lies buried one 
of the men who came so blithely to Kansas nearly half 
a century ago and broke the silence of the prairies 
with the baying of their hounds and huntsman horns. 



The Comanche Steal 

One day in the summer of 1872 two or three buffalo 
hunters were riding through the favorite grazing 
grounds of the then countless herds of bison in south- 
western Kansas when they came upon a camp of five 
men. Three of the men were A. J. Mowery and James 
Duncan, of Doniphan County, and Alexander Mills, 
of Topeka; the other two were residents of Hutchin- 
son, probably C. C. Beemis and Major Bowlus, but of 
that I am not certain. The five were busily engaged in 
working out a plan for the organization and subsequent 
looting of Comanche County. They had their plans 
about completed, but needed a county attorney and 
proposed to one of the buffalo hunters, J. S. Cox, that 
he take the position. Cox was not a lawyer, but they 
assured him that a total lack of legal knowledge was 
not an objection but rather an advantage. To have 
a county attorney who was a lawyer in the organization 
they were forming might be embarrassing. Cox seems 
to have fallen in with the proposition in that free and 
easy way of buffalo hunters, not regarding it seri- 
ously. The quintet then unfolded to him their plan, 
which was really charmingly simple. It was to or- 



62 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

ganize the county, send Mowery to the Legislature to 
secure the passage of a law authorizing Comanche 
County to issue bonds for the building of a court house, 
building bridges and $20,000 or $30,000 for the pay- 
ment of general expenses. The second part of the in- 
teresting program was the organization of school dis- 
tricts and the voting of almost unlimited school bonds. 
The new county attorney listened in amazement. He 
knew that within the 900 square miles of territory they 
proposed to include in the county, there was hardly a 
single bona fide inhabitant and not a dollar's worth of 
taxable property, except some roving herds of cattle 
which could easily be driven out of the reach of the 
assessor. He was curious to know who would buy the 
bonds issued by such a brazenly fraudulent organi- 
zation and was told that in Topeka there was just as 
good a market for a fraudulent bond as a genuine, 
the only difference being the price. 

So, with no one to molest or make them afraid, the 
band of thieves matured their plans and put them into 
execution. From St. Joe hotel registers, supplied pre- 
sumably by Mowery, the names of residents were gath- 
ered. A census taker was appointed, one A. Upde- 
graff, the son of an honest father and mother who had 
fallen among evil companions and who was persuaded 
to become the handy tool of thieves, although he prob- 
ably received but little share of the plunder. Within 
the brief period of ten days or less Updegraff, accord- 
ing to the record, rode or walked several hundred miles 
over trackless prairies of Comanche County, gath- 
ered the names of 600 bona fide inhabitants, solemnly 
swore to the correctness of the list, and forwarded his 
report to the governor's office at Topeka, and on Octo- 
ber 28, 1873, the proclamation was issued declaring the 
county duly organized. 

Election day was drawing near and according to 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 63 

program Andrew Mowery was selected by the five to 
represent the county in the lower house of the Legis- 
lature. It was an easy and inexpensive election. Two 
hundred and forty names were copied from the con- 
venient St. Joe hotel register and voted for Mowery. 
Certificates of election were forwarded to the secretary 
of state and at the opening of the legislative session in 
January, 1874, Mowery appeared with his credentials 
and was sworn in as a member of the law-making body. 
Everything moved with the smoothness of well oiled ma- 
chinery. The fraudulent commissioners were author- 
ized to issue bonds for various purposes and did issue 
$29,000 to C. C. Beemis to build a court house. Getting 
court house bonds was Beemis' specialty. It will be re- 
called by those who have read the section, "The Loot- 
ing of a County," that the Barber county commis- 
sioners issued at different periods to this same Beemis 
some $65,000 in warrants, afterwards funded into 
bonds, to build a court house. In addition to the court 
house bonds the county commissioners issued $23,000 
bridge bonds and $20,000 bonds to pay general ex- 
penses, in all $72,000. Then came the second part of 
the program, the organization of school districts and 
the issuing of bonds. This opened an inviting and ex- 
tensive field, but it was through the school bond steal 
that the looters came to grief. School district No. 1 
was organized about the county seat, in which there 
was one cabin, named in honor of the then secretary of 
state, Smallwood, who was also one of the board desig- 
nated by law to care for and invest the school funds of 
the state. District No. 1 issued bonds to the extent 
of $2,000 and Representative Mowery came with the 
bonds to Topeka and offered them for sale to the per- 
manent school fund. With the approval of Secretary 
Smallwood and the superintendent of public instruc- 
tion, a gentleman by the name of McCarty, Mowery 



64 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

sold the bonds for $1,750 and either pocketed the 
money himself or divided his loot with his confederates. 
It was planned to load the school fund with at least 
$40,000 more but happily the attorney general inter- 
fered with the arrangement. The secretary of state 
and state superintendent attempted to clear their 
skirts, but if they were not positively dishonest they 
certainly were criminally negligent of their duty. 

Having apparently concluded that they had gathered 
about all the harvest of loot there was to gather, the 
organizers of Comanche abandoned it to the buffalo 
and the coyote, and in 1876 Mowery, who had gone back 
to Doniphan County, somehow persuaded his neighbors 
to send him to the Legislature from that county, al- 
though the record of his villainy had become generally 
known. The Legislature of 1876 expelled him and at 
the instance of the attorney general he was arrested, 
charged with having forged the school bonds he had 
sold to the state. When notified that he was to be ar- 
rested he fled the state, but was apprehended over in 
Missouri and brought back for trial. For want of posi- 
tive evidence of the forgery, the county attorney of 
Shawnee County dismissed the suit and Mowery went 
free. 

It is a shameful fact that not one of the thieves en- 
gaged in the fraudulent organization of Barber, Co- 
manche and other counties was ever punished by law for 
his crime. If a citizen buys a horse in perfect good 
faith and afterwards finds that it was stolen he must 
restore it to the owner when the latter proves his title. 
The fact that he was an innocent purchaser does not 
save him from loss, but although it was common knowl- 
edge that the region in which Comanche County was 
located was in 1872, 1873, and 1874 an uninhabited 
wilderness, the purchasers of the fraudulent bonds were 
not required to beware of their purchase. The courts 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 65 

protected them, saddled the burden of the utterly 
fraudulent obligations on subsequent settlers, who had 
no part in their making, and then failed to mete out 
any punishment to the thieves. No wonder the man 
who is serving a term of years in the penitentiary for 
stealing a calf or a few dollars, cannot see the justice 
of a law which punishes him with great severity, while 
thieves who boldly plundered through fraudulent bond 
deals to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars 
are permitted to go scot free and even pose as honor- 
able citizens. 

Most of the plunderers who operated in Barber and 
Comanche Counties have gone to their final rewards. 
The last time I saw the census taker of the fraudulent 
organization of Comanche he was suffering from a 
severe bullet wound received in an impromptu duel on 
the streets of Dodge City with the celebrated Bat Mas- 
terson, the other party to the shooting. He revived 
from that to die later from smallpox and was laid 
away by the gamblers and demimonde of that then 
wild frontier town. The others, who were much more 
guilty than Al Updegraff, have gone, I do not know 
where, but if there is an old-fashioned orthodox hell 
they are probably meditating on their past sins as they 
roast in the sulphurous habitations of the damned. 



The Legislature of 1875 

An examination of the files of the old Common- 
wealth during the legislative session of 1875 is cal- 
culated to take the conceit out of the modern legisla- 
tive reporter. Not only were the legislative re- 
ports in the Commonwealth of that date more full 
and enlightening than the legislative reports in 
any paper I know of at the present time, but they were 



66 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

put up in better literary style and had in them more 
of the human interest. Possibly the session of 1875 
was no more interesting than many other sessions of 
that early day, but it happened that the Legislature 
contained a good many men who had considerable to 
do with shaping Kansas history and several of them 
afterward rose to prominence. 

The speaker of the House was Ed Funston, big of 
body and with a sonorous voice which gave him the 
name of "Fog Horn Funston." He afterward served 
with distinction for eleven years in the lower house of 
Congress and had the added distinction of being the 
father of General Fred Funston. The chief clerk of 
the House was Captain Henry Booth, formerly of the 
United States regular army and afterward for many 
years receiver of the United States land office at 
Larned. Among the members were Dudley C. Haskell, 
of Lawrence, gigantic in stature, brilliant in intellect. 
As a member of Congress he rose rapidly to distinction 
until cut off by premature death. Had he lived, he 
would have ranked as one of the great men of the 
nation. There was also Jim Legate, cynical, crafty and 
resourceful, dowered by nature with a great brain but 
unfortunately with a lack of moral perception which 
ruined his usefulness and blighted his career. There 
was Billie Buchan, then young, ambitious and daring, 
who never realized his ambition to go to Congress but 
who was able to make and unmake a good many men. 
Sam Benedict, of Wilson County, tall, spare, hampered 
by ill health a good deal of the time, which tended 
to spoil his temper, possessed of rare good sense and 
unimpeachable integrity, a graduate of Williams Col- 
lege, and a man of wide reading and fine literary taste, 
never seemed to care particularly for either political 
honors or leadership, but was a most valuable member 
of the Legislature, because he hated anything that 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 67 

smelled of graft and had no patience with extravagance 
or what seemed to him foolish legislation. There also 
was P. P. Elder, then a Republican, afterward a leader 
of Greenbackism and Populism, forceful and careless 
in his use of language, and generally known as the 
most artistic swearer among the public men of the 
state. Also there came to the Legislature from Ford 
that unique frontiersman, Bob Wright, of Dodge. 

In the Senate there was the scholarly jurist, Solon 
O. Thatcher, and the later chief justice of the supreme 
court, Albert H. Horton. Sam It. Peters came from 
Marion to the Senate, but afterward moved to Newton 
and, after serving for two terms as judge of the old 
Ninth judicial district, which took in about all of the 
southwest quarter of Kansas, was elected to Congress, 
where he remained for eight years, refusing a re- 
nomination in 1890, which showed his rare political 
judgment, for it was in that year that the wave* of 
Populism swept over the state and submerged all but 
two of the Republican candidates for Congress. Wil- 
liam Alfred Peffer came as a senator from Montgomery. 
At that time a strict party man and ardent advocate 
of high protection, he probably had no premonition 
of the political revolution which fifteen years later was 
to separate him from the party of his young man- 
hood and land him in the United States Senate, as a 
member of which body he was to become one of the 
most talked about and most generally cartooned men 
in the nation. 

At the beginning of the session the Commonwealth 
speaks of the Legislature as an exceptionally fine body 
of men, but at the close sadly admits that blamed 
little of real worth had been accomplished, which may 
be said of most legislatures. The year 1874 had been 
one of widespread disaster to Kansas. The swarms of 
grasshoppers had devoured practically every green 



68 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

thing. In the west half of the state drouth had burned 
up what little the hoppers had left and the principal 
topic before the Legislature was how to get aid for 
the sufferers. There was a general disposition to call 
on the general government for assistance, but among 
a number state pride revolted at the idea of going 
abroad to ask for alms. It was proposed to issue state 
bonds to secure the necessary money for the purchase 
of seed wheat and necessary supplies to tide the settlers 
over until another crop could be raised, but the lawyers 
in the body were raising constitutional objections 
which so irked the mind of Bob Wright, of Dodge, that 
he introduced the following resolution: 

"Resolved: That 100,000 copies of the constitution be 
printed in pamphlet form for distribution among the desti- 
tute people of western Kansas to enable them to get 
through the winter and to furnish seed wheat for planting; 
and in order that all persons may be provided it is ordered 
that 25,000 of these pamphlets be printed in Irish, 25,000 
in German and 50,000 in English, and in order that no 
expenditure may be made for expressage and freight on 
the same, each member is expected to carry home in his 
carpet sack the quota belonging to his county." 

In spite of the fact that the Legislature contained 
so many men of ability and experience, there was the 
same tendency to hasty and careless legislation noted 
in every legislative body. For example, there was 
House Bill 21, to prevent the spread of certain con- 
tagious diseases among horses, mules, and asses, the 
first section of which read as follows: 

"Sec. 1 : That it shall be unlawful for the owner of any 
horse, mule, or ass affected by the diseases known as nasal 
gleet, glanders or button-farcey, and any person so offend- 
ing, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon con- 
viction be punished by a fine of not less than fifty dollars 
nor more than five hundred dollars and in default of pay- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 69 

ment shall be imprisoned for any period not exceeding 
twelve months, or by both such fine and imprisonment at 
the discretion of the court." 

Passing over the question as to whether the bill 
meant that the owner of the horses, mules, and asses 
or the beasts themselves were affected by all of these 
diseases, the language leaves one in complete ignorance 
as to what said owner is guilty of, whether of owning 
the animals or having the disease, and yet the bill with 
this identical language had passed through the hands 
of the committee on agriculture and been recommended 
for passage. 

Chan Brown, afterward for many years clerk of 
the supreme court, represented Marshall County. He 
was interested in the propagating of fish in the state 
and introduced a bill requiring owners of dams to 
construct chutes or fish ladders over the same. His 
bill met with little encouragement. Future Congress- 
man Haskell insisted that the fish in Kansas were too 
big and lubberly to climb ladders over dams and Sam 
Benedict said that the only kind of fish there were in 
the state were buffalo fish and catfish, neither of which 
could get up one of the fish chutes and wouldn't be 
worth anything if they did, as "no white man would 
eat one of them." Sam was always more or less dys- 
peptic, which accounted for his taste. 

The most picturesque character in the Legislature of 
1875 was Representative Carter from Sumner. Carter 
was a Democrat. How he happened to be elected is 
not disclosed, but it may be accounted for on the theory 
that Sumner, which at that time was a frontier county, 
had a good many Texas cattle men among its citizens 
who were Democrats of the old southern type who 
wouldn't vote for a Republican under any considera- 
tion and, furthermore, most of the frontier citizens 
were not greatly interested in politics and didn't care 



70 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

a hoot who went to the Legislature. In the files of 
the Commonwealth under the title, "The Leader of 
Democracy," may be found a word picture of the 
Sumner County statesman, which ranks almost with 
the classical description of "Chang" by John J. Ingalls 
in his famous sketch, "Catfish Aristocracy." 

"Imagine," says the Commonwealth reporter, "a tall, 
angular, loose- jointed, shuffling-gaited specimen from 
the banks of the Wabash, or the mountains of Ten- 
nessee. The inequality of outline in this physical con- 
formation suggests the idea that the various features 
which go to make up the physiological unit called 
Carter once belonged to as many different men, from 
whom they were violently torn from time to time and 
at length thrown together with a contemptuous dis- 
regard of order, propriety, and the fundamental princi- 
ples of architecture. Surmounting this structure is a 
head calculated to arrest the attention of the most 
observant. Narrow at the base — proof sufficient of 
austere virtue — it gradually contracts as it ascends 
to a tiny bulb, resembling a poke berry, but called 
the organ of veneration, forming the apex. Carter's 
facial aspect is among the marvels of physiognomy. 
Over the scarred and wrinkled surface the rank vegeta- 
tion of his beard throws a melancholy shade. Bushy 
eyebrows stand sentinel over opaque and bulbous orbs, 
above which mounts the 'dome of thought' to the height 
of perhaps an inch and a quarter." 

The statesman from Sumner had one pet bill on 
which he expected his legislative fame to stand. It 
was an act to protect horses, mules, and cattle from 
being poisoned by the castor bean. Section 1 of this 
bill read as follows : "Any person or persons growing 
or cultivating castor beans in the state of Kansas 
shall inclose or cause the same to be inclosed with a 
lawful fence." He watched his measure anxiously as 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 71 

it slid back on the calendar until the very last days 
of the session were at hand and with no prospect of 
its passage. Then the house leaders, Legate, Bill 
Buchan, and Dudley Haskell came to his rescue. They 
assured him that they had become convinced his bill 
had great merit and that they would see that it got 
before the committee of the whole house for considera- 
tion. Carter was pleased. He assured them that he 
would not like to go back to his people without having 
done something to curb the deadly ravages of the castor 
bean and would appreciate their help. 

Before final adjournment Jim Legate solemnly arose 
and moved that the house resolve itself into committee 
of the whole for the consideration of house bill 224, 
the castor bean bill, and suggested that it would be 
only fitting that the gentleman from Sumner should be 
called to the chair. Carter was elated and taking the 
gavel rapped loudly for order, announcing that the 
house was now in committee of the whole for the con- 
sideration of house bill 224. 

The first motion was made by Bill Buchan, the 
member from Wyandotte, that the word Kansas be 
stricken out and Arkansaw substituted therefor. The 
chairman looked puzzled and said it seemed to him 
"that-ar motion" was out of order. Buchan, however, 
insisted with such earnestness on his motion that the 
chairman put it to the house. It received a loud and 
unanimous vote in the affirmative and when the nays 
were called for the vote was equally unanimous. The 
chairman was in doubt, but said it sort of seemed to 
him that the ayes had it. 

Jim Legate then arose and gravely moved to amend 
the second line by substituting the word oil for beans, 
so that the section would read "Any person or persons 
growing or cultivating castor oil," etc. This amend- 
ment also carried by the same overwhelming vote. 



72 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Then with towering stature and deep bass voice 
arose Dudley Haskell and said : "Mr. Chairman : The 
section as amended lacks harmony and felicity of ex- 
pression. I move the following substitute for the entire 
section: 'Section 1. Any person or persons using 
castor oil in the state of Kansas shall be inclosed with 
a lawful fence.' " 

The house, lobby and galleries howled and rocked 
with unholy mirth. It was dawning on the statesman 
from Sumner that a job had been set up on him and 
he was stirred with righteous anger. He ordered the 
sergeant-at-arms to preserve order and clear the lobby 
and raged ineffectively when he saw his authority and 
orders set at naught. 

At this point Buchan arose, his face apparently 
covered with gloom and said that he was grieved to 
see a worthy measure treated with levity and riotous 
disorder unbecoming the dignity of the house. He 
thought, however, that the phraseology of the bill 
should be changed somewhat and moved that section 5, 
the final section, be amended to read: "Section 5. 
This oil shall be in force and take effect from and after 
its use once by the chair," and with a wild and joyous 
whoop the bill, so changed and amended, was recom- 
mended for passage. 

In the years that have fled since then all the principal 
actors in the legislature of 1875 have passed on. 
Billie Buchan, Funston, Haskell, Legate, Elder, 
Horton, Peters, Benedict, Bob Wright, Henry Booth, 
Peffer and Thatcher have joined the silent majority, 
the unnumbered multitude of the dead. 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 73 

A Whisky Murder 

r.ledic'me Lodge never acquired the reputation of 
<being a wild and woolly town in the sense that that 
name attached to Dodge City, or Wichita in its early 
days, or Newton or Abilene when they were the end 
of the Texas cattle drive, or Caldwell or Hunnewell 
in the days of their pristine glory. Before the rail- 
road reached Medicine Lodge, the day of the cattle 
drive was passed, and while a bad man occasionally 
sojourned there for a night, or maybe a week, there 
was no congregation of killers. Medicine Lodge never 
had a dance hall such as flourished in each of the other 
towns, when they were the objectives of the vast herds 
driven over the long trail from the vast plains of 
Texas on their way to the markets of the North and 
East. 

Still there were some tragedies, and this story re- 
lates to one which I think had something to do with 
the fact that in the election of 1880 this frontier 
county gave a majority for the prohibitory amend- 
ment to our state constitution. While there was not 
so much of it sold as in some of the towns, the quality 
of the whisky sold in Medicine Lodge was as bad as the 
worst. I have known men who were ordinarily quiet and 
peaceable when sober, after imbibing a few drinks of 
the beverage, to go stark mad for the time being and 
become more dangerous than Bengal tigers. I know 
a most reputable man, kindly, law-abiding and in every 
way a model citizen for many years past, who con- 
fesses that he shudders when he thinks of how near 
he came to being a murderer when crazed by a few 
drinks of border drug store whisky. But that is an- 
other story. 

One May day in 1879 a country boy, perhaps nine- 
teen or twenty years of age, rode into town. John 



74 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Garten had not been known as a "bad man." He was 
just an ordinary, gawky, green country boy, who had 
reached the age when he probably thought it would 
be smart to show off and also an indication of manly 
quality to fill his hide with drink. It was probably 
this ambition, rather than any confirmed appetite for 
liquor, that caused him to take on several drinks. 
Probably at that, nothing serious would have hap- 
pened if he had not been filled with another ambition, 
and that was to carry a gun and acquire the ability 
to draw and shoot like one of those gun fighters he had 
heard about. 

It was along toward evening of the long beautiful 
day in the latter part of May, that young Garten 
mounted his horse, probably at the suggestion of the 
town marshal and rode out of town, emitting a few 
"whoops" as he rode. A few miles west of the Lodge, 
at a crossing of one of the little tributaries of the 
Medicine, he overtook two women, a mother and her 
daughter. They stepped to the side of the road to 
let him pass. He rode past them a few rods and then 
with a drunken howl pulled his pistol from its holster 
and fired two shots in the direction of the women. 
With a cry of anguish the younger woman, Mrs. Stead- 
man, fell mortally wounded. It is quite probable that 
young Garten did not know that he had hit either 
woman, for he rode on without further looking back- 
ward, stopped at the ranch where he had been work- 
ing, unsaddled his horse and made no effort to escape. 
He expressed great surprise when a few hours after- 
ward the tall, gaunt frontier sheriff rode up to the 
ranch house and said quietly, "John, I want you for 
murder." 

Garten protested that he had just intended to give 
the women a scare and didn't suppose he had hit either 
one of them, and quite probably he was telling the 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 75 

truth. The murder aroused a storm of indignation 
when young Garten was brought into town. An in- 
offensive, popular young woman had been shot down 
without any provocation and there was talk of the law 
of the border. There were mutterings of vengeance 
and knots of men gathered and conversed in low earnest 
tones, more dangerous than any loud threats or 
bluster. A few hours afterward the big lank, weather- 
beaten sheriff with the prisoner in charge, rode away 
through the moonless night to the northward and put 
Garten for safe keeping in the Rice County jail to 
await his trial. In those days there were only two 
terms of court in Barber County and before the time 
for Garten's trial he escaped from jail and, it was 
believed, fled to the mountains of New Mexico. 

The father of the murdered woman was a lean, 
powerful man by the name of Champion, a typical 
frontiersman. I think he had come originally from 
the mountains of Kentucky or Tennessee and if so was 
born to believe in the doctrine of the blood avenger. 
Sparing of speech and stern of face, Champion made 
little demonstration of his grief, though it was under- 
stood that he possessed a quiet and deep affection 
for his children. When the news came that Garten 
had broken jail, Champion said nothing, but those 
who were in his confidence knew that he had gone to 
New Mexico. For almost a year nothing was heard 
from him, but there was a persistent rumor that he 
was playing the part of the avenger of blood; that 
he had gone on a relentless, tireless man hunt for the 
slayer of his first born. Finally he returned. He said 
nothing for publication, but there was the look on his 
face of a man who had accomplished his task and 
fulfilled the old law, the law still of the mountains, 
an eye for an eye, a life for a life. 

No one outside of Champion and his few confidants 



76 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

knew what had been the result of that long year's hunt 
through the mountains and over the burning desert 
sands, but Garten was never found by the authorities 
or returned for trial. Those who knew the boy never 
believed that he was a willful and deliberate murderer. 
His crime was the direct result of the villainous liquor 
that was sold in the frontier town. At the next elec- 
tion the question was up to amend the constitution so 
as to make the sale of whisky as a beverage forever 
unlawful. The rough bearded men riding the range, 
with ample time to meditate as they rode, considered 
the case of the boy Garten, the murdered woman, the 
lean-faced, stern, unsmiling, close-lipped frontiersman 
on his lonely vigils in the mountains, searching with in- 
domitable will and marvelous patience for the man he 
meant to kilL They considered and voted for pro- 
hibition. 

Circumstantial Evidence 

During the seventies in western Kansas, horse steal- 
ing was regarded as a much more serious crime than 
just ordinary murder. Of course the killing of a human 
being, according to the recognized code of the border, 
should be done according to certain well recognized 
rules of fairness, such for example, as that both the 
shooter and shootee should be "heeled" and that neither 
one should try to perforate his opponent when his back 
was turned. There were certain exceptions to this 
general rule as, for example, when either party an- 
nounced to the other that he intended to shoot him on 
sight, the presumption would be that both would have 
their "weapons" handy on all occasions and if they 
failed to do so they must take the consequences. In 
that case if a man wasn't "heeled" it was clearly his own 
fault, the presumption being that he was, and that the 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 77 

only safe way for the other man was to commence 
shooting as soon as his adversary came in sight. Even 
after courts had been established for several years, 
although the cases of homicide were quite numerous the 
number of legal convictions was decidedly small. 

But in the case of a horse thief — well, that was dif- 
ferent. The horse was about the only means of con- 
veyance and in the cattle business it was absolutely 
essential. It was necessary, too, to let the horses run 
on the range unguarded, and the cattleman reasoned 
that unless the men who lusted for the possession of 
good horses were restrained by the fear of prompt and 
violent death, no man would be sure when he turned 
his horses out at night that he would be able to gather 
any of them in the morning. In the short and sum- 
mary disposal of men suspected of purloining horse- 
flesh, the well established rule of the courts that a man 
accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent until 
proven guilty, was reversed and the accused man was 
presumed to be guilty unless he could pretty clearly 
establish his innocence. Even at that, it is probable 
that considerably more than half of the men hanged 
in those early years as horse thieves, were guilty as 
charged. 

It was on a pleasant day in the summer of 1876 that 
J. B. Boswell, a reputable citizen of Russell, Kansas, 
started to ride over into Nebraska. He was alone and 
unarmed and rode on untroubled by premonitions of 
impending trouble. He rode into the town of Creede, 
Nebraska, when he was suddenly arrested, charged with 
being a horse thief. He was taken before the mayor 
of the town, which was already incorporated, and there 
subjected to a rigid examination. He was told that 
there had been some horses stolen and that every 
stranger was under suspicion, but they would give him 
a chance to prove himself innocent. He talked as per- 



78 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

suasively as he knew how, but the examiners seemed 
skeptical. After a while they informed him that they 
had already hung one horse thief, who before being 
swung off had stated that there was a Kansas man 
implicated with him, and Boswell unfortunately was 
the only Kansas man they had rounded up so far. The 
presumption was therefore against him. It did not 
seem to avail him anything to assure them earnestly 
and vehemently that he had never seen this horse thief, 
did not know him either by sight or name and that 
he was peacefully going about his regular business 
down in Kansas when the horses were stolen. The im- 
promptu court reasoned that it had the dying state- 
ment of the horse thief that there was a Kansas man 
mixed up with him and — that being the case — it was up 
to Boswell either to produce the Kansas man who was 
guilty or to admit that the presumption of his own 
guilt was strong. 

In spite of his protests and argument that it was 
absurd to convict him on the strength of the state- 
ment of a horse thief about to die, that some Kansas 
man was his confederate, they cast him into jail and 
that evening about nine o'clock some twenty-five men 
called for him and took him out of town a mile or two 
where there was either a convenient tree or possibly 
a telegraph pole. He afterward confessed that he 
begged piteously for his life, but in case his captors 
did not see fit to grant that, he asked to be hung from 
the railroad bridge over the nearby draw. He urged 
that it would be preferable to be hanged from the 
bridge because the fall would undoubtedly break his 
neck and save him the torture of slow strangulation. 
"For God's sake, men," he implored, "hang me decent," 
which, notwithstanding its violation of the strict rules 
of grammar, would seem to be an entirely reasonable 
request. But one of the party bent on swinging him 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 79 

objected to this concession to his feeling", saying that 
"strangulation was good enough for a damned Jay- 
hawker." 

However, a majority of the party thought that it 
would only be fair to give Boswell two or three minutes 
to pray if he wanted it. To this Boswell replied that 
he didn't see that it would do him any particular good 
to pray, and anyway he was not in practice, but that 
he would appreciate it if they would allow him to make 
a will. This request was granted and he drew up a 
brief statement of how he wanted his property disposed 
of, asked a couple of members to witness it, and then 
stated that he was ready. Something about his state- 
ments and manner seemed to impress the leader of the 
party and raised a doubt in his mind about Boswell's 
guilt. Turning to the rest of the men, he said, "It's 
up to you to say whether we swing this feller or not. 
Take a vote on it and if you vote that he is to swing, 
he swings." It seemed that Boswell had also made 
an impression on some of the others and after some 
argument they voted, not to turn him loose, but to 
give him forty-eight more hours to prove that he was 
innocent and not the man referred to by the dead 
horse thief. Then they took him back to jail. What 
changed their minds Boswell did not know, but greatly 
to his relief, after keeping him in jail a couple of 
days they let him go. They did not apologize or even 
tell him that they had decided he was not the man they 
wanted, but as they let him go free he did not care to 
stand on little matters of etiquette. What he prin- 
cipally wanted was to get back to Kansas as soon as 
possible. 

When once more safe among his neighbors, he re- 
lated his experience and said with a sigh, as he wiped 
the sweat which beaded his forehead as he recalled his 
experience, "I sure had a hell of a time." And even 



80 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the local minister who listened to the recital admitted 
that Boswell's statement was moderate and not really 
tinged with profanity. 



The First Paper in Barber County 

In the early part of the year 1878 a man by the 
name of Cochran concluded that there was a field for 
a newspaper in the frontier town of Medicine Lodge. 
He purchased a Washington hand press from McElroy 
of the Humboldt Union, together with a couple of 
racks, a few cases, a well worn font of long primer 
type and another font of brevier, a few job fonts for 
advertising purposes, moved the outfit to Medicine 
and commenced the publication of the Barber County 
Mail. Possibly Cochran concluded that it didn't make 
much difference what kind of a paper was published in 
that kind of a town, or possibly he didn't know how 
to keep the worn type clean and a decent "impression" 
on the Washington hand press, but whatever the reason, 
the fact was that the paper was generally unreadable. 
Cochran was a man of fair ability with a rather catchy 
style of writing, but a good many of his local and 
editorial observations were lost because it was impos- 
sible to read what he had printed. Whether it was the 
poor print of the paper or the flirtatious disposition 
of the editor that caused him to become unpopular, I 
am unable to say, but the fact was that before his 
first year in the town had expired a number of residents 
gathered together and decided that he must depart 
thence in haste and with a promise never to return. 

It .was also decided that there must be meted out to 
him punishment commensurate with his offending, and 
on a decidedly cool night in the month of February, 
1879, the regulators took the editor from his humble 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 81 

office, stripped him of his clothing and then admin- 
istered a punishment which I think was entirely unique 
and unprecedented in the treatment of editors. There 
was no tar in the town and not a feather bed to be 
opened, but an enterprising settler had brought in a 
sorghum molasses mill the year before and as sorghum 
generally grew well there, had manufactured a crop 
into thick, ropy molasses. Owing to the cold weather 
the molasses was thicker and ropier than usual. The 
regulators secured a gallon of this, mixed it well with 
sandburs, which grew with great luxuriance in the 
sandy bottom of the Medicine, and administered this 
mixture liberally to the nude person of the editor. I 
do not need to tell my readers who are familiar with 
the nature of the sandbur, that it is an unpleasant 
vegetable to have attached to one's person. Clothed 
with this unwelcome covering of sandburs and sweet- 
ness, Cochrane was elevated upon a cedar rail and 
carried about on the shoulders of the self-appointed 
regulators. He privately acknowledged afterward that 
while this was an elevation and distinction such as no 
other editor perhaps had ever received, he would per- 
sonally rather have remained a private and humble 
citizen on foot. After carrying the shivering and 
besmeared editor about to their hearts' content, occa- 
sionally adding to his general discomfort by bouncing 
him up and down on the rough and splintered corner of 
the rail, the regulators told him that he must leave 
town within twenty-four hours, and never show his face 
or form there again. 

There were other citizens of the town, among them 
a brother of mine, who, while not particularly enamored 
with Cochran or his style of journalism, felt that his 
morals would at least average up with those of his 
persecutors. They also organized, armed themselves 
with such weapons as were convenient, and told the 



82 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

editor that he could remain as long as he wished and 
they would be responsible for his safety. Cochran ex- 
pressed his appreciation of their kindness, but con- 
fessed to them that the atmosphere of the town did 
not seem salubrious or congenial to him and if they 
would arrange to purchase his paper and outfit he 
would seek other climes where it was not the habit 
to decorate editors with sandburs and sorghum mo- 
lasses. His proposition was accepted by my brother 
and his brother-in-law, E. W. Iliff ; the Barber County 
Mail slept the sleep that knows no waking and a new 
paper, the Medicine Lodge Cresset, was born. 

The name Cresset was the selection of Iliff, who 
looked the typical frontiersman, but was really a lover 
of good literature and an especial admirer of Milton. 
Readers of "Paradise Lost" will recall the vivid descrip- 
tion of Satan's palace which was lighted by "cressets." 
This appealed to Iliff's poetic fancy and so the name, 
Medicine Lodge Cresset. The name called for a good 
deal of explanation. Half the exchanges persisted for 
years in calling it the Crescent, apparently laboring 
under the impression that some followers of the Sultan 
had migrated to Kansas and gone into the newspaper 
business. There was also some considerable curiosity 
among the readers of the paper, who had never read 
the blind poet's great creation. "What's the meanin' 
of this here name Cresset?" asked a rough, weather- 
beaten cowboy, who ambled one day into the office. The 
origin of the name was carefully explained to him. He 
mused over it for a time, then looked at the rather 
meager and not very handsome paper, and exclaimed: 
"Damned fittin' name I would say. This here is a hell 
of a paper, isn't it?" 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 83 

The Wonderful Mirage 

The following thrilling story of adventure and hair- 
raising experience is related by Judge William R. 
Smith, of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad. 
Judge Smith modestly insists that the story is not for 
publication, but I can not permit so interesting and 
verified a narrative to be lost to the reading world. 
I therefore violate his confidence and give you the story 
as he related it to me: 

"The spring of '79 will always be memorable for the 
devastating cyclones which started in Texas and moved 
north through the Indian Territory into western Kansas. 
Not one alone terrified the early settlers who were making 
their homes on the frontier, but a succession of tornadoes 
moved over the country at that time, leaving destruction 
and death in their wake; a second and third gleaning what 
was left of the scanty possessions of the already impover- 
ished people. 

"On May 29, of that year, a cyclone of unheard-of 
violence traveled over the Indian Territory on its way to 
Kansas. Dirty Mud, a chief of the Snake Indians, had 
four of his wives swept from his side while they were 
engaged in the domestic duty of preparing the intestines 
of a dog for their husband's dinner. Dirty Mud was, 
however, somewhat consoled after this sad bereavement 
by the fact that he had three wives left, who, fortunately, 
were chopping wood two miles distant from the path of the 
storm. This consolation, however, was brief, for with an 
inhuman mania for destruction, this same cyclone, after 
moving forty miles north, hesitated on its deadly journey, 
and returning the next day, carried the three remaining 
wives of Dirty Mud off the face of the earth, and they 
were seen no more. Waiting for two days to be assured 
that none of his wives would descend, Dirty Mud married 
again, but not until he had dug a cyclone cellar fourteen 
feet deep under his cabin, into which, at the first appear- 
ance of a dark cloud, he let down his second batch of wives 
to a place of safety, with a rope. 



84 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

"What I have related so far is not recorded from per- 
sonal observation. I come now, however, to an experience 
in which I played a thrilling and dangerous part. It re- 
lates to the same cyclone which so greatly disrupted the 
domestic relations of the Snake Indian chief and brought 
profound sorrow into a family happily united. I was 
making a business journey on horse-back from Sheridan 
Lake to Water Valley, two towns situated about five miles 
over the Kansas line in Colorado. In the southwest were 
gathering clouds, accompanied by gusts of wind which 
greatly agitated the sagebrush and cactus, filling the air 
with red dust. As the wind grew stronger, a cloud blacker 
than ink approached the earth, and to my great terror as- 
sumed a funnel-shaped form, leaving no doubt that a 
deadly cyclone was close at hand. My horse, now spurred 
to a gallop, his ears laid back, and trembling like a leaf, 
swept past hundreds of jack rabbits, which were running 
at full speed in their efforts to escape. Giving a backward 
glance, I saw the funnel-shaped monster whirling in its 
course, tearing up all vegetation in its path and digging 
a trench two feet deep in the dry sand. It had a rotary 
motion, which in the brief time I had to calculate, I es- 
timated at 300,000 revolutions a minute. On its closer 
approach, my horse became violently excited. Leaping 
over a boulder, he looked back, increased his speed, and 
snorting with fright, threw spray from both his nostrils 
to a distance of ten feet. There was no escape. The 
horrible monster would swallow us in an instant more. I 
held my breath. At that moment the whirling cyclone 
sent a stone against the horse's ribs, at which he reared 
on his hind legs, made a violent plunge sidewise and threw 
me, stunned and bleeding to the ground. This saved my 
life and that of the horse. 

"I was thrown twenty feet from the path of the cyclone 
and escaped with no serious injuries. The horse did not 
fare so well. The edge of the whirling cloud, propelled 
with irresistible force, and revolving like a buzz-saw, struck 
the animal a glancing blow and passed on with terrific ve- 
locity to the north. On arising to my feet I approached the 
horse, which stood perfectly still in a dazed condition, par- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 85 

alyzed with fright. On examination I found that every hair 
on his body had been pulled out by the roots, until his skin 
had the appearance of a Mexican dog. Science has not yet 
accounted for the eccentric freaks of a cyclone after it gets 
a fair start. The horse then began to shake like a man 
with the ague, swaying from side to side. Cold sweat 
streamed from his body, and so violent were the vibrations 
of his head that every tooth in his mouth rattled to the 
ground, some of them flying off to a distance of twenty 
feet. He did not long survive this attack. Surrounded 
with succulent grass reaching to his knees, the poor animal 
starved to death in less than a week. After his death it 
was discovered that by some unknown chemical action the 
horse's hide had been completely tanned and was soft and 
pliable enough for the manufacture of the finest shoes. 

"Looking in the distance to note the movements of the 
cyclone, I was astonished to see several houses and a 
church on the border of a lake, on the banks of which were 
many trees, some of them ten feet in diameter and a hun- 
dred feet high. Knowing the arid condition of the country, 
I saw at once that the unusual manifestation was a mirage. 
At the same instant the cyclone attacked the town, the lake, 
and the trees with tremendous force. It started with 
lightning speed and moved swifter than a rush telegram 
over a down-hill wire. It looked more vicious than when 
it passed me and struck the horse. Quicker than I can tell 
it, the funnel-shaped cloud of ferocious blackness struck 
the edge of the lake. Trees of the size described appeared 
to be twisted out by the roots, with the facility with which 
a dentist pulls a tooth. Their huge trunks disappeared, 
ground to a pulp in an instant. After the trees were dis- 
posed of, with one gulp the cyclone swallowed all the water 
in the lake, leaving its bed dry and sandy as a brick yard. 
Its tentacles were next thrown around the church steeple, 
carrying it away without disturbing the rest of the build- 
ing. When the devastation was complete, it stopped in 
its course as if hesitating before seeking new food for 
its voracious maw. This pause in its progress led me to 
think that the unsubstantial impediment to the devastating 
work of the cyclone, which the mirage had interposed, had 



86 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

been disappointing, inasmuch as no physical force could 
dissipate or destroy this optical illusion. I was forced to 
smile at the futile attack of the vicious cyclone on the 
imaginary village, with its lake and trees, which disap- 
peared like a vision when the black monster whirled over 
the place where it seemed to have a site and fixed location. 
No sooner had the cyclone moved on, however, than the 
houses reappeared, the trees resumed their former places 
and the lake was as calm and peaceful as before. 

"I have never heard of another instance where a mirage 
was seen to come into collision with a cyclone. Inasmuch 
as there were no witnesses who can attest the truth of what 
I saw, I have been careful to avoid exaggeration, as should 
be done in all cases where personal experiences of a 
startling nature are detailed, in the absence of others who 
may vouch for their accuracy." 



The Last Indian Raid in Kansas 

On Tuesday, September 17, 1878, a horseman rode 
down the valley of the Medicine, his horse covered with 
foaming sweat. He carried the news that there had 
been an Indian massacre on the Salt Fork of the 
Cimarron River, in the southwest part of Comanche 
County, in which two persons had been killed outright, 
a baby mortally and two other persons seriously 
wounded. The attack, according to the report brought 
by the horseman, had been made at Sheets' cattle camp 
near the state line by a party of Cheyennes under the 
command of a daring young Cheyenne chief, called Dull 
Knife. The Northern Cheyennes had been moved from 
their northern hunting grounds against their will. 
They chafed under the restrictions of the agency and 
the young warriors plotted to go back to the land 
where they were born and where they and their fathers 
had hunted for many generations. There has been an 
impression that the entire tribe of Northern Cheyennes 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 87 

were engaged in this raid. The fact is that not more 
perhaps than a hundred of the young warriors fol- 
lowed Dull Knife in his journey north. 

From the Sheets' ranch the horseman reported that 
the Indians had traveled on to the Payne ranch. Payne 
was afterward president of the Comanche pool and was 
killed by bank robbers at Medicine Lodge in the spring 
of 1883. The rider went on to say that Payne had 
been shot in the neck, Mrs. Payne had been shot in 
the thigh, and their baby had been shot through the 
breast. Tom Murray, a cattle herder, had been caught 
out alone and, true to his race and name, he had died 
fighting. It may not be out of place here to publish 
the following brief but touching tribute to the lone 
Irish herder, written by Captain Byron P. Ayers, of 
whom I have made former mention, which was published 
subsequently in the Barber County Mail: "In your 
paper last week you told that Tom Murray was dead. 
The boys who knew him have asked me to say something 
about him and have you print it. I do not know what 
to say, except that he was a good man, always sober, 
told the truth, loved children, and revered women. He 
died fighting bravely to the last." 

I have always considered that as fine and compre- 
hensive a tribute as I have ever read. A few hours 
after the report of the massacres reached Medicine 
Lodge, forty or fifty determined, well armed men were 
mounted and on the way to intercept the savages. 
They were not trained soldiers, but I question if a 
nervier set of fighters ever rode out to battle. I have 
some personal pride in the expedition because a brother 
of mine rode with them, a young and stalwart man, 
quiet, cool, never given to boasting, never reckless, but 
who, had he been given command of a forlorn hope, 
would, I am certain, have ridden to the death as coolly 
as rode the troopers of the "Six Hundred" at the fatal 



88 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

charge of Balaclava. His body lies in an Oklahoma 
burying ground, and I trust I may be excused for in- 
serting this tribute to his memory. 

Some forty miles south of Dodge City the Barber 
County scouts joined a force of United States regulars 
and the combined force succeeded in intercepting Dull 
Knife and his band. They, in fact, practically sur- 
rounded the Indians in a canyon in what is now Clark 
County. The regulars and scouts together consider- 
ably outnumbered the Indians and might have either 
captured them or exterminated them. The scouts, 
however, had put themselves under command of the 
United States regular officer in command of the troops 
and he refused to attack. They asked to be per- 
mitted to attack, trying to convince the officer in com- 
mand that while an attack might mean the loss of a 
few men they certainly could stop the further progress 
of the Indians. The officer refused, threw out pickets, 
and ordered that no attack be made until the next 
morning. Under cover of darkness the wily savages 
slipped away, and when the morning came the regu- 
lars and scouts found they were guarding an empty 
canyon. The scouts were humiliated and disgusted 
and always regarded the regular officer in command of 
the troops as a coward, who was responsible for the 
trail of blood and fire afterward made by Dull Knife 
and his band before they were finally captured. 

They had entered at the southwest corner of what 
is now Comanche County and crossing the state came 
out of it on the north line of Decatur County. The 
number of persons murdered by them in Kansas was 
variously estimated at from seventy-five to one hun- 
dred. The failure of the regulars to stop them before 
they had done any considerable amount of damage 
called forth this editorial reference from the Medicine 
Lodge editor in his paper of October 17, 1878: 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 89 

"Poor Lo has outgeneraled the U. S. troops and 
Dull Knife has shown himself entitled to a name among 
the great warriors of the red braves." 

The band was finally captured in Nebraska. Some 
of them were killed before the capture and Dull Knife 
and a number of other warriors were put in jail. My 
recollection is that none of these were finally executed 
for their crimes. It is not at all improbable that even 
yet there is preserved in some Cheyenne teepee a scalp 
lock or two gathered on that the last Indian raid 
through Kansas. 

For several years after, the border was troubled 
with a fear of another outbreak and during the ad- 
ministration of Governor St. John a border patrol was 
established, an organization something after the 
fashion of the Texas rangers. A few well armed and 
well mounted men rode the southern line of Kansas 
from the Cowley County border to the Colorado line, 
but there was no other Indian chief with the daring 
and organizing ability of Dull Knife to lead the young 
braves on another expedition of pillage and massacre. 



The Hillman Case 

It was in the last days of March, 1879, when I 
reached Medicine Lodge after a long, windy and weari- 
some trip from Wichita in a freight wagon. I had not 
been notified that there had been a change of owner- 
ship in the frontier newspaper, and I may say in pass- 
ing that when I started west I had no idea that I was 
to be a newspaper man. In fact I had never up to 
that time been inside a newspaper office or seen a 
type. 

When I entered the Cresset office on that windy 
March day, Iliff was seated at a pine table. In front 



90 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of him lay his "45" revolver, fully loaded. He filled 
my imagination of what "Jim Bludso" of the "Arizona 
Kicker" ought to look like. His hair, black and coarse 
as that of an Indian, fell down over his collar. His 
eyes, black and flashing, looked out from under beetling 
brows with hairs stiff and wiry and as long as the 
ordinary mustache. His dress was in keeping with his 
appearance. Around his neck was a red bandana hand- 
kerchief. His dark gray woolen shirt, flaring open 
slightly at the throat, revealed in part the muscular 
neck and hirsute breast. He wore the leather "chaps" 
common to the cow men of that day and his pants, 
stuffed in his boots, were held in place by a belt well 
filled with loaded cartridges. A woven rawhide quirt 
hung from his left wrist. The heels of his boots were 
ornamented with savage-looking spurs. He was booted 
and spurred and ready to ride. But he was not just 
then thinking of the range. He was engaged in writ- 
ing a most vigorous editorial, as I recall, on the Hill- 
man case. 

A couple of weeks before that time there had been 
a tragedy up on Spring Creek, fourteen miles north- 
west of Medicine Lodge, and a country justice, George 
Washington Paddock, acting as coroner, had held in- 
quest over the supposedly dead body of John W. Hill- 
man. Hillman, a farm laborer of Douglas County, 
had, at the instance of one Levy Baldwin, taken out 
life insurance in various companies to the extent of 
$25,000 in the aggregate. No cash had been paid, as 
I now recall, for the initial premiums on the policies. 
Notes, I think, indorsed by Levy Baldwin had been 
accepted by the agents. That a man in Hillman's 
financial circumstances should take out so much in- 
surance on his life, was to say the least, remarkable, 
for in those days the farm laborer was not paid large 
wages and the annual premiums on that amount of in- 



HAPPENINGS IN THE SEVENTIES 91 

surance would equal the probable earnings of a man 
like Hillman. 

A man by the name of Brown reported the killing 
of Hillman. He said that in drawing a gun out of the 
wagon it was accidentally discharged, the bullet strik- 
ing Hillman behind the ear and passing through his 
brain. The verdict of the coroner's jury was based on 
these supposed facts. The body was buried at Medicine 
Lodge. I think his wife did not come to the funeral, 
and altogether there seemed to be a rather remarkable 
indifference displayed on the part of his relatives and 
friends. Ten days afterward a representative of one 
of the insurance companies arrived at Medicine Lodge 
and had the body exhumed and shipped to Lawrence for 
identification. Then commenced one of the most cele- 
brated cases in the history of life insurance. 

The claim of the insurance companies was that the 
whole thing was a conspiracy concocted by Baldwin 
and Hillman to defraud the insurance companies out of 
$25,000. They declared that a victim by the name of 
Walters had been employed by Baldwin and Hillman 
bo accompany Hillman and Brown down to Barber 
County, where Walters was to be murdered and his 
body buried for that of Hillman, while Hillman, of 
course, was to disappear. Some months after the kill- 
ing Brown made a confession, in which he declared that 
his first statement to the coroner's jury was false; 
that, as a matter of fact, Walters had been murdered 
by Hillman at the camp, after which Hillman had dis- 
appeared and Walters' body had been buried in his 
place. 

The attorneys for Mrs. Hillman produced several 
reputable witnesses in Medicine Lodge, who declared 
that Hillman had visited the Lodge several weeks before 
the killing, and was detained there during a storm which 
lasted several days. These witnesses declared that the 



92 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

man who visited the Lodge on the prior occasion and 
the man who was shot were one and the same. Know- 
ing these men well, I can not doubt their honesty, 
and it is hard to believe that they were mistaken. 
Pictures of the missing man, Walters, and of Hillman 
did not show any marked resemblance between the two. 
On the other hand, the circumstances were exceedingly 
suspicious, the taking out of a $25,000 life insurance 
by a common laborer, the burial of the body in an 
unmarked grave, with apparently no intention of re- 
moving it to his home at Lawrence, the giving of notes 
instead of cash for the payment of the first premiums 
on the policies, the confession of Brown, all tended to 
make a strong prima facie case for the insurance com- 
panies. 

For a quarter of a century the case dragged its way 
through the courts, up to the supreme court of the 
United States and back again and again to the supreme 
court. Some of the ablest lawyers not only of Kansas, 
but of other states were engaged on one side or the 
other. Finally the case got into state politics, when 
Webb McNall, insurance commissioner under Governor 
Leedy, ordered the New York Life to pay the Hill- 
man policy or get out of the state. The cases were 
finally compromised, the companies concluding that it 
was better to pay what they considered a wrongful 
claim than to fight the matter longer. If Hillman was 
not killed, he was never heard from again; if the man 
who was killed was not Walters then there was another 
remarkable disappearance. I have little doubt that 
taking out the policies of insurance was part of a con- 
spiracy to defraud the insurance companies, but I have 
thought there was a failure of the plan, at least so far 
as Hillman was concerned, and that he was really 
killed at the lonesome camp on Spring Creek. 



PICTURESaiTE FIGURES 

A Frontier Surveyor 

When I arrived at Medicine Lodge I found the 
principal surveyor a hunchback by the name 
of George Wise. Wise was the owner of a 
surveyor's tripod, transit, surveyor's chain, and a 
diminutive donkey. When Wise and his surveyor's 
outfit were loaded on the back of the donkey the top 
of his cowboy hat hardly rose above the points of the 
donkey's ears. Whether Wise knew anything worth 
mentioning about the science of surveying is a question, 
but he was in some ways the most accommodating sur- 
veyor who ever sighted over a transit. 

He was frequently employed by cattlemen who took 
up claims with the idea of controlling as much running 
water as possible. Wise operated on the theory that 
the business of surveying was not to try to find the 
government corners and establish lines in accordance 
therewith, but to establish corners and lines that would 
suit the wishes and convenience of the party who em- 
ployed him to do the surveying. It was said to be 
quite customary with him when he had unloaded his 
tripod and transit from the back of the donkey to 
ask in his high-pitched, thin voice, "Well, where the 

do you want these corners located?" I was 

talking with a resident of Barber County only a few 
days ago and was told that corner stones can still be 
found down there which have, apparently, been located 
without any reference to the government survey. I 

93 



94 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

have no doubt they were located by Wise, the hunch- 
back. 

Like many men suffering from a permanent affliction 
that causes a physical deformity, Wise was a man of 
irascible temper, easily irritated and petulant. He 
always affected the cowboy dress and carried with 
pride a number "44" revolver, a huge gun which seemed 
larger on account of the diminutive stature of the man 
who carried it. When Wise could get a crowd to listen 
to him, he liked to talk of his prowess and achieve- 
ments. 

One day he commenced a narrative of which he was 
particularly proud. When he commenced there was 
quite a large and apparently deeply interested audi- 
ence, but he had only got fairly started when the 
hearers commenced to drop out, just casually, as 
though they had lost interest or happened to think 
of something somewhere else. Wise was so deeply in- 
terested in his own narration that he didn't note the 
gradual thinning out of the crowd until, happening 
to turn his head, he observed that there was only 
one man left, a stranger who had just come in to look 
at the country and was sitting in the drug store where 
Wise was telling his story and in the corner where 
he could not well get away. It probably had not oc- 
curred to him to go away, as he had not been let in 
on the job that was being put on the peppery little 
hunchback and was listening to the story with polite 
and apparently interested attention. When Wise saw 
that the crowd had deliberately walked out on him it 
filled him with rage. To the astonishment and possibly 
somewhat to the alarm of the polite stranger the hunch- 
back suddenly pulled his gun out of its holster and, 
pointing it at the lone auditor, his shrill voice shaking 
with anger, he yelled : "Don't you move, damn you. 
You're goin' to listen till I get through." 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 95 

It is hardly necessary to remark that the stranger 
did. 

Wise was at this time a middle-aged man but had 
never married. There came as a cook in one of the 
frontier restaurants a robust female who for some 
inscrutable reason began to "cotton" to the hunch- 
back surveyor. She must have impressed him with her 
heft as she was not a damsel fair to look upon. She 
was built, however, in a way to rival the behemoth of 
Holy Writ. The courtship was short and ardent and 
when the knot was tied, apparently both were supremely 
satisfied. A more strangely assorted couple was 
perhaps never seen. The bride stood, I should say, 
about six feet in her stocking feet and would weigh 
around two hundred and twenty-five, while the groom 
stood about five feet and would weigh perhaps a 
hundred net. When they walked out together she 
towered above her diminutive spouse like one of the 
Ringling elephants above his keeper. Before the honey- 
moon was ended, however, the town jokers began de- 
liberately to fan the flame of jealousy in the heart of 
the hunchback. One after another came to him with 
tales of cowboys who were trying to make love to his 
wife. The tale bearers told him that these men were 
sore on him because he had "cut them out" and that 
they were trying now to alienate the affections of his 
matrimonial partner. They told him that while the 
fact that he was able to win this fair maid away from 
all these other suitors showed that he was some ladies' 
man, there was no telling what devilment these dis- 
appointed men would try to put into her head when 
he wasn't watching. The trouble makers succeeded 
even better than they had hoped, and watched the green 
eyed monster take possession of the hunchback sur- 
veyor with unholy joy. A time came, however, when 
there was a possibility that the joke might result in 



96 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

a tragedy. A dance was being held in the restaurant, 
which had been cleared of tables and counters for that 
purpose, and the frontier fiddler was droning out his 
invariable opening call to the "sets" formed for the 
quadrille, "Jine hands and circle to the left" when a 
weazened figure, his eyes blazing with wrath and his 
gun in hand, came raging down the center of the 
room. It was "Humpy Wise." One of his supposed 
rivals had invited Mrs. Wise to dance. Wise pro- 
posed to stop proceedings. There was to be no "On 
with the dance, let joy be unconfined" so far as he was 
concerned, and incidentally it may be remarked that 
proceedings did stop for the time being. As one of 
the cowboys remarked, "The durned little crook- 
backed son-of-a-gun might let that gun go off. You 
can't always tell." 

Frontier Barbers 

When I arrived in Medicine Lodge, after a long, 
wearisome, and dusty trip on a freight wagon, I needed 
the ministrations of a barber. I asked if the town 
supported a tonsorial artist, and was told if I meant 
by those words to describe a party who shaved people 
and cut their hair, and the like, that the town did. 
They said I would find the town barber at the livery 
stable. I assumed that they meant that, during a 
temporary lull in the rush of business, he was loafing 
about the livery stable, but that was a mistake. I 
went to the stable and saw a man of vigorous frame 
acting as chamber maid for a number of raucous- 
voiced mules and partially civilized bronchos. I in- 
quired if he had seen the town barber. 

"You are looking at him right now," he replied, as 
he leaned the fork up against the side of the stable 
and rubbed his hands on his overalls. 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 97 

"Where is your shop ?" 

"Right in there, stranger," pointing to a small room 
boarded off at one corner of the stable. 

There were two ordinary chairs in the room and I 
sat down on one of them. The barber mixed up a half 
pint or so of lather in an ancient-appearing cup, took 
a razor from a shelf and stropped it on his bootleg, 
drew up a chair behind the one on which I was sitting, 
put one foot up on this chair and bent my head back 
over his knee until my neck described a parabola and 
my Adam's apple jutted up into the air like a lowly 
mound. The barber distributed lather over my 
countenance with lavish and indiscriminate brush. I 
inadvertently started to open my mouth to protest and 
received a spoonful or such a matter. My recollection 
is, however, that, barring the fact that it was mixed 
with mule hair after the manner in which hair is mixed 
with lime in making mortar, it was not different either 
in taste or consistency from other lather I have sampled 
during the fleeting years. 

By the time the job of amputating my whiskers was 
finished, I felt that I probably had permanent curva- 
ture of the spine, but youth is resilient; my head 
snapped back into place and there was no subsequent 
ill effect. After the whisker amputation was completed, 
the barber wiped my countenance with a sponge which 
smelled as if it had been used in completing the toilet 
of the mules ; anointed my j aws with Mustang liniment 
and informed me that my bill was fifteen cents. I had 
been accustomed to ten cents for a shave and, in- 
fluenced by the place and service, was inclined to kick 
and neigh, but came across. The barber informed me 
that there was really nothing in the barber business 
in that town, and that he had about decided to quit. 
He left shortly afterward. 

In a few weeks a man came to town, saying that he 



98 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

had heard Medicine Lodge needed a barber shop and 
he thought there might be an opening. The valor of 
ignorance is remarkable. I have often wondered since 
that the inhabitants of a frontier town like Medicine 
Lodge, where they were supposed to shoot on slight 
provocation, permitted that man to practice on their 
faces and get away alive. He had no barber chair, 
but employed a local carpenter to make him one. If 
the carpenter had ever seen a barber chair, there was 
nothing about his handiwork to indicate it. The chair 
was entirely rigid. When the victim was once seated, 
there was no chance for him to shift his position to 
mitigate the agony. This second alleged barber was 
an earnest soul. I will say for him that he took his 
work more seriously than almost any man I ever knew. 
He had a curious habit when shaving you of running 
out his tongue as some men do who find writing a most 
laborious and serious matter. 

This habit of his had one thing to recommend it. I 
used to become so much interested in watching his lin- 
gual contortions that I forgot the torture of the razor. 
I had never supposed before that the human tongue 
could express by silent movement the varied emotions 
of the man to whom it belonged. When the razor was 
operating in proximity to the jugular, the barber's 
tongue seemed to contract to about the size and ap- 
pearance of a carpenter's red keel pencil. It would 
quiver and sometimes perform a rapid spiral motion. 
This indicated mental excitement and apprehension. 
When, however, the razor was pulling steadily up and 
down the cheek, the barber's tongue would drape itself 
languidly and peacefully over his lower lip. 

The only explanation I can see for that barber's im- 
munity from assassination at the hands of some muti- 
lated customer was his earnestness and effort to please. 
One day a customer by the name of Van Slyke endured 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 99 

the amputation of his beard with remarkable patience 
for half or three-quarters of an hour. By that time 
the barber had gotten over all of Van's face except his 
upper lip. "Would you like to have your upper lip 
shaved?" he asked. 

"No," patiently replied Van Slyke. "For awhile 
after I got into the chair I thought I would just let 
you pull out all the whiskers and save me from any 
further expense for shaving, but I have changed my 
mind. I am going to save what are left just to show 
these guys around here that I can raise hair on my 
face if I want to." 



a 



Windy Smith' 9 and "Tiger Jack' 9 



There is something about the frontier that seems to 
attract to it more varied and peculiar kinds of individ- 
uals than can be found elsewhere. These peculiar types 
were interesting to me and may be to such as take 
the time and trouble to read this series of stories of 
early western Kansas life and times. 

Among the peculiar individuals who attracted my 
attention was one known as "Windy Smith." Smith's 
job was to transport the mail twice a week from 
Medicine Lodge to a couple of postoffices which had 
been established in southwest Barber and southeast 
Comanche Counties for the benefit of the ranchmen 
who pastured their cattle in that locality. The mail 
was carried on a somewhat ancient and discouraged 
appearing, sway-backed, dun-colored mule. The mule 
was the property of "Windy Smith," but probably 
was somewhat encumbered by a chattel mortgage. 

As I was young and unmarried, I frequently stayed 
in the newspaper office evenings and after Smith had 
delivered the mail and cared for his mule, he got in the 



100 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

habit of coming to the office to loaf. On about the first 
of these occasions he told me that he was from Virginia 
and owned, as I recall, a quarter section of land there. 
He found me, as he supposed, an interested listener. 
He did not often find that kind of listeners. The men 
who knew him were apt to find some excuse to go some- 
where else when he commenced to talk, but I listened 
well and it warmed the cockles of his heart. The next 
time he came to the office his land holdings had in- 
creased to a section. I did not call attention to the 
discrepancy. He probably thought I had forgotten 
what he had told me the last time, or maybe he had for- 
gotten himself. I was still a good listener and that 
fact won me favor in his eyes. At the next evening 
session I noted that he had increased his acreage to 
two sections, but still I seemed interested and credulous. 
As a matter of fact, I was becoming interested. I was 
curious to know just how far his imagination would 
expand. 

From that time on the imaginary holdings of 
"Windy Smith" increased faster than Falstaff's "men 
in buckram." In a couple of weeks he assured me un- 
blushingly that he was the owner of 20,000 acres of 
Virginia land and in a month his possessions amounted 
to more than 40,000 acres. After an hour of this sort 
of pipe dreaming he would go away to seek repose in 
the hay loft of the stable that sheltered his sway- 
backed dun mule, and the next morning would ride out 
of town on his long and lonesome journey across the al- 
most uninhabited cattle ranges. I never had the heart 
either to call attention to his differences of statement 
or to express a doubt as to their accuracy. These lies 
were really his only recreation. They did no harm so 
far as I could discover. While he was telling them 
the old mail carrier lived in imagination surrounded 
by fabulous wealth, the master of vast possessions. Of 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 101 

course after it was over he had to get down to the 
sordid realities of life — a bed in a hay mow, a salary 
of perhaps $40 per month out of which had to be paid 
the keep of the sway-backed dun mule — but for a little 
while he was a Croesus in his mind, and as an appar- 
ently credulous and interested listener I contributed 
to his temporary happiness. 

In the Medicine valley some three or four miles south 
of Medicine Lodge lived John Sparks, commonly known, 
as "Tiger Jack." The fact was that Sparks was one 
of the most harmless of men, but, like "Windy Smith," 
gifted with a marvelous imagination. I think living 
in comparative solitude, as the early settlers did, was 
calculated to develop the imagination. "Tiger Jack's" 
imagination did not run to vast possessions, but to 
personal prowess and daring. It seemed to me that a 
great many of these peculiar characters drifted into 
my office and unloaded on me the product of their 
imaginations. Sparks used up several hours of my 
time in this way. He told me that when the buffalo 
were plentiful he was by all odds the most skilled and 
successful hunter that there was on the plains. I asked 
him if he had ever been in any close places while hunt- 
ing. He assured me that he had. He said his closest 
call was one day when he got caught in a vast herd 
of stampeded buffalo. He was riding a small pony and 
saw that he was liable to be run over and trampled to 
death. Or if he kept up with the herd he saw that the 
buffalo were heading for a high bluff and that if he and 
his pony were forced over it was sure death. But his 
presence of mind did not desert him. He jumped from 
the back of his pony on to the back of the nearest 
buffalo and from the back of that buffalo on to the 
back of another and then on to another until he finally 
reached the outer edge of the herd, traveling a mile or 
so on the backs of buffalo. 



102 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

I asked him how he got the name of "Tiger Jack" 
and he proceeded to unfold a marvelous story of an 
adventure in Colorado. He informed me confidentially 
that it was owing to his efforts that Colorado was pre- 
vented from going out of the Union. The fact that 
Colorado was not admitted to the Union until eleven 
years after the War of the Rebellion seemed to have 
escaped his memory. After his heroic stand for loyalty 
he had learned that a white woman was held in cap- 
tivity by a band of Indians and, feeling that the Union 
was saved so far as Colorado was concerned, he im- 
mediately set out like a knight of old to rescue the 
captive lady. 

"I found the Indian village where the woman was," 
said Sparks, "and taking the bridle rein in my teeth 
and a revolver in each hand, I rode right in, grabbed 
the woman and put her up on the saddle in front of 
me and rode away. That was where I got the title of 
'Tiger Jack.' " I submit that a man who could lift a 
woman up on his saddle while carrying a revolver in 
each hand, and with his bridle rein in his teeth, would 
be entitled to be called "Tiger Jack." 

It was a peculiarity of "Tiger Jack's" stories that, 
while they nearly all led right up to the very edge of 
slaughter, I do not recall that he ever claimed to have 
killed anybody. Generally his presence was sufficient 
to strike terror to the hearts of his opponents, and so 
he was saved from the necessity of killing anyone. I 
think the fact was that Sparks, who was really, as I 
have said, a harmless and inoffensive man, did not want 
to imagine that he had really killed anybody, but did 
want, like a good many timid men, to create the im- 
pression that he was a man of great daring and 
prowess. For a good while after making his acquaint- 
ance I regarded him as quite an interesting liar, but 
when he began to repeat on me, telling me the same lies 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 103 

over and over again, they grew monotonous, stale, and 
unprofitable. 

Bad Men — Real and. Imitations 

There has been a great deal written about the "bad 
men" of the frontier, but not a great deal about their 
harmless imitators. The real "bad man" of the frontier 
was sui generis. He had certain marked character- 
istics. He was generally quiet even when in liquor and 
there was a reason for this, for after all the real "bad 
man" was not a fair fighter. When he made up his 
mind to kill, it was not his purpose to notify the victim 
of his intention. He was not of the rattlesnake type 
which gave warning when about to strike, but, like 
the copperhead or deadly adder, he struck swiftly and 
with deadly certainty; yet, with a certain cunning, he 
generally managed to make it seem that he killed in 
self-defense. 

It is true that there were noisy cowboys who, when 
filled with the craze-producing hell broth that passed 
for whisky in the frontier towns, would go on a ram- 
page and howl and shoot, but generally that kind of a 
man did not aim to kill anybody in particular; he 
was just firing his gun for the purpose of creating a 
general panic and any spectator who happened to be 
in range was likely to get hurt, not because the drunken 
cowboy wanted to hurt him, but because he was un- 
fortunate enough to get in the way of a flying bullet. 

There were also a few men who were in no sense dan- 
gerous, but who possessed a curious egotism that made 
them want to create the impression that they were 
really desperate characters. They made no impression 
on those who were acquainted with them, but a stranger 
listening to one of them for the first time was likely 
to get the impression that he was listening to a real 



104 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

man, whose weapon was fairly covered with notches, 
recording the number of victims of his deadly aim. 
Among this class the man who most impressed himself 
on my memory was "Uncle Bill Carl," who had a claim, 
which he called his ranch, on the Medicine. 

"Uncle Bill" was really a kindly soul, as harmless as 
a setter pup, but dowered by nature with a voice like 
the roaring of many waters. So far as I can recall he 
never even carried a gun, which after all was an evi- 
dence of wisdom, for had he foolishly gone armed with 
his mouth going oif at random some man would almost 
certainly have called his bluff and killed him. As a 
romancer "Uncle Bill" had few equals, especially when 
he was more or less illuminated. It was under such a 
condition of partial inebriety that he was wont to make 
his announcement, especially if a tenderfoot happened 
to be present. 

"I'm Buckskin Bill from the Rocky Mountains," he 
would roar in a voice which made the rafters shake. 
"When I was in my prime and started on the warpath 
grizzly bears hunted their holes in terror and women 
called in the children playin' among the muskeet, sayin' 
'Come in here to your mother, Buckskin Bill is comin* 
down the mountain with blood in his eye.' But Buck- 
skin Bill from the Rocky Mountains never harmed 
wimmen er children. When I went on the war path it 
was as an avenger of blood. 'Dead Eye Dick' and 
Slade, the chief of the bandits, knowed Buckskin Bill, 
and when they heard me comin' they fled fur shelter 
to the deepest recesses of the mountains. 

"I hev whipped twice my weight of mountain lions 
and strangled a wild cat with each hand when they was 
both a-clawin' me. I could shoot so fast that five 
bullets out of my gun would hit a man after I ceased 
firin'. With the bridle rein in my teeth and a gun in 
each hand, I hev rode into a band of a thousand mur- 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 105 

derin' Apaches and rescued a weepin' female from her 
bloodthirsty captors." 

Having delivered himself of this historical informa- 
tion in a deep roaring 1 voice, he would wind up with a 
song about 

"Hairlip Sal from Bitter Creek, 
She wore a number nine; 
She kicked the hat off a Texas galoot 
To the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne.' " 

Occasionally "Uncle Bill" made a pilgrimage to 
Wichita, which was then a decidedly wide-open town. 
One of the thirst parlors of the frontier metropolis 
was kept by a German of uncertain temper, which was 
not improved by the fact that occasionally the rounders 
made a concerted raid on his free lunch counter and 
went away without buying even so much as a glass of 
beer. "Uncle Bill" happened in at one of the times 
when the Dutchman had an accumulation of grievances. 
There was what was called a reform administration just 
elected, which not only insisted on boosting the saloon 
license fifty per cent, but also passed a midnight clos- 
ing ordinance and instructed the police to order the 
saloonkeepers to have less noise about their places of 
business. 

Just before "Uncle Bill" blew in, the Dutchman had 
been called on to pay his increased license ; the boys had 
eaten all his cheese, wienerwurst, and other refresh- 
ments on his free lunch counter and then insolently 
directed him to lay in a new supply before they re- 
turned. The policeman on that beat had just in- 
formed him that there was complaint that there was 
too much noise around the place. Taken altogether, he 
was in no amiable frame of mind. As "Uncle Bill" lined 
up with the crowd in front of the bar he roared out, 
"I'm Buckskin Bill from the Rocky Mountains. I kin 



106 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

whip twice my weight in mountain lions and hev 
strangled two wild cats at one time, one with each 
hand when both was clawin' at my frame. Whoop !" 

It was just about the last straw. The Dutchman 
sized "Uncle Bill" up correctly and therefore was not 
impressed or afraid. 

"I dond care veder you vas Puckskin Bill or Sheep- 
skin Bill, I vont haf you makin' all this noise my saloon 
in and bringin' der bolice here preddy quick all of a 
sudden mit. I trow you oud mit here," and, suiting the 
action to the word, he grasped "Buckskin Bill from the 
Rocky Mountains" by the collar and slack of his pants 
and heaved him out of the door. "Uncle Bill" was just 
gathering himself up from the sidewalk when a friend 
who knew him came by. 

"What's the trouble, 'Uncle Bill? 5 " 

"Why, that Dutchman throwed me out." 

"What !" exclaimed the friend in feigned surprise, 
"You don't mean to say that a Dutch saloonkeeper 
threw Buckskin Bill from the Rocky Mountains out of 
the saloon and still lives?" 

"Hush, son, hush !" replied Bill, as he brushed the 
dirt from his clothes in an uncertain manner, 'D'you 
suppose that Buckskin Bill from the Rocky Mountains, 
the terror of Wild Cat Gulch, is goin' to disgrace him- 
self fightin' with a Limburger-eatin' Dutch- 
man?" 

A Border Justice 

When the town of Medicine Lodge had achieved a 
population of two hundred and fifty, some of the enter- 
prising citizens decided that it ought to be incorporated. 
They argued that it would give more dignity and tone 
to the town if it had a regular city government, with 
a mayor and a city marshal wearing his star. The 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 107 

required petition was circulated and signed by a ma- 
jority of the electors of the village, duly presented to 
the board of county commissioners, the proper publica- 
tion made and Medicine Lodge became a city of the 
third class. Among the earliest selections for the 
office of police judge was L. D. Hess, who had come 
to the frontier town to start a grocery store. 

Hess was a man who wasted fewer words in express- 
ing his ideas than almost any man I ever knew. He 
was also the most deliberate man, with the exception of 
the late Judge J. D. McFarland, that I ever met. 
During an acquaintance of several years I never saw 
him show any indications of excitement or haste. 
Whether the town was stirred by the advent of a cow- 
boy filled with "hell's delight," riding full tilt through 
the street, scattering shots and howling profanity as 
he rode, or by a western zephyr cavorting across the 
townsite filling the air with dust and shingles and awn- 
ings ripped from their moorings, Judge Hess main- 
tained the same imperturbable calm and moved about 
his appointed tasks with the same grave delibera- 
tion. 

One day the Judge was proceeding along the street 
with his slow, but even stride, carrying a ladder, his 
head thrust between the rungs and the ladder resting 
on his ample shoulders, for it may be noted here that 
notwithstanding his peacefulness of disposition, in these 
days the Judge was a powerful man. He never quar- 
reled or "fussed" with any man. Apparently his temper 
was never ruffled. He just went along attending strictly 
to his own business in his slow, easy, quiet way like 
a man who was at peace with himself and all man- 
kind. On this particular day a cowboy from one 
of the territory cattle ranges happened to be in town 
on a vacation. He had already imbibed several drinks 
of the far-reaching liquor that was dispensed at that 



108 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

date and was filled with booze and happiness. As the 
Judge passed him carrying the ladder a delightful idea 
worked its way into the brain of the cowboy. He 
suddenly caught the end of the ladder and swung it 
violently around. The Judge caught unawares spun 
around rapidly, but managed to keep his feet under 
him. Those of us who knew him were compelled to say 
that we had never seen him move with such alacrity. 
His countenance, however, remained calm and un- 
ruffled as a duck pond unstirred by the wind. 

As soon as he fully recovered his equilibrium he 
lifted the ladder from his shoulders, set it up carefully 
against the side of the building, moved the base back 
a trifle so that there would be no danger of its toppling 
over, stepped back and looked at the ladder to see that 
it was standing to suit him, and then turned his gaze 
slowly toward the cowboy, who was viewing the situa- 
tion with great delight. 

Then there was a surprise for the man from the 
range. The Judge moved deliberately over toward the 
cowboy and suddenly his powerful right arm straight- 
ened. His fist caught the cowboy fairly under the 
chin and almost lifted him clear of the ground. The 
cowboy lit out near the middle of the street and 
for some moments subsequent proceedings did not in- 
terest him. 

On the countenance of the Judge there was no in- 
dication of either excitement, anger, or triumph. 
Calmly he took the ladder from the wall, adjusted 
it to his shoulders with his head between the rungs, 
and slowly wended his way toward his store, where 
he also kept his office as police judge. There, without 
the slightest indication of nervousness, he opened his 
docket and made an entry of case of the "City of 
Medicine Lodge vs. L. D. Hess ; charge, disturbing the 
peace by fighting ; defendant fined $2 and costs ; fine 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 109 

and costs paid by defendant ; case closed." With 
justice fully satisfied and the law vindicated, Judge 
Hess went with unruffled calm about his business. But 
other cowboys did not try to have fun with him. 



A Frontier Attorney 

Among the first attorneys to settle in Medicine 
Lodge was a young Irishman, in after years known 
all over Kansas as Mike Sutton. At the age of fifteen 
Mike had entered the army, spent two years as a sol- 
dier, and when peace came determined to get an edu- 
cation and study law. 

In the early seventies, perhaps 1873 or 1874, he 
landed in Medicine Lodge and proclaimed himself a 
lawyer. Business for a lawyer was decidedly scarce 
and the picking slim. Mike was, however, single and 
care-free and not disposed to worry over his financial 
condition. To save laundry bills he washed his single 
shirt in the clear, soft waters of Elm Creek and rested 
under the shade of the plum bushes while the gar- 
ment dried in the sun. On one occasion the driver 
of the buckboard, which carried the government mail 
between Medicine Lodge and Hutchinson, saw a shirt 
draped over a bush near the crossing and was about to 
appropriate it, when Mike, concealed in the bushes, 
yelled at him. "Hi, there, let that shirt alone. You 
have two shirts that I know of. What do you want 
to rob a man for who only has one? This is no Garden 
of Eden where a man can run naked like Adam did 
before he climbed that apple tree!" 

Mike formed a partnership with another indigent 
young lawyer by the name of Whitelaw, who for some 
inscrutable reason had gotten the notion in his head 
that there was room for another lawyer in the frontier 



110 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

town. Somehow the firm got a case that had to be tried 
at Hutchinson. As the time of trial approached Mike, 
for the first time since his settlement in the town, ap- 
peared to be somewhat worried. "Jim," said he to his 
partner, "one of us has got to go to Hutchinson and 
try that case. I really haven't clothes fitting to ap- 
pear in court, but you have a pair of overalls, nearly 
new, and a shirt that you haven't been wearing more 
than six months. You also have a pair of socks and 
your toes are not sticking out of your shoes. You 
will have to go and show the court that this firm has 
some style and dignity." 

In 1876 or 1877 Mike decided that the prospects for 
law business in Medicine Lodge were not encouraging 
and moved to the wild and woolly town of Dodge, then 
the end of the great Texas cattle trail and there he 
lived until his death about a year ago. He built up 
a lucrative practice, became recognized as one of the 
most successful and resourceful lawyers in the state of 
Kansas, and died possessed of a comfortable fortune. 

A story is told of the resourcefulness of Mike Sut- 
ton in the trial of a law suit. A witness was on the 
stand whose testimony, unless it could be discounted 
in some way, would probably knock the bottom out of 
Mike's case. It looked as if he was up against it when 
suddenly the thought occurred to him to introduce as 
a witness an expert on prevarication. 

"Buffalo Jones," the well known hunter and town 
builder, was sitting in the room where the case was 
being tried. "Buffalo Jones will take the stand," said 
Mike. The case was in justice court. 

"Buffalo" had not anticipated being called into the 
case, but he promptly came forward and was sworn. 

"State your name and place of residence," said Mike. 

"My name is C. J. Jones. I live in Garden City, 
Kan." 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 111 



"How long have you lived in western Kansas?" 

"Thirty years." 

"From your experience and observation of men in 
this western country are you able to tell from the 
expression of countenance, the manner of speech, and 
the actions of a man whether or not he is a liar?" 

"I am," calmly answered Jones. 

"You are something of a liar yourself, are you not, 
Mr. Jones?" 

"I am," again calmly answered Jones. 

"Have you carefully observed the countenance, the 
manner of speech, and the actions of the witness who 
just left the stand?" 

"I have." 

"Will you state to the court as an expert on pre- 
varication whether or not this witness is a liar?" 

"My judgment as an expert on truth and prevari- 
cation is that he is a liar." 

"Take the witness," said Mike triumphantly. 

It was in vain that the attorney on the other side 
protested to the justice of the peace that this was 
an unheard-of proceeding, that the books nowhere gave 
any authority for introducing an expert on prevarica- 
tion and that Jones had not in any event qualified 
himself to testify as an expert. The justice knew that 
Mike Sutton understood his business and decided as 
follows: "It is the opinion of this court that Mike 
would introduce no incompetent testimony." 



Didn't Recollect the President 

Back in the seventies there lived in the state of New 
York a widow possessed of considerable wealth and 
a son named Stanley, who caused a lot of worry 
and gray hairs to his fond mother, for Stanley was 
decidedly inclined to wander into the primrose-lined 



112 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

paths of sin. He looked on the wine when it was red. 
He also looked on and sampled practically everything 
else that had a kick to it and as a result the boy 
was fairly well lit up most of the time. 

It occurred to Mrs. Parsons, Stanley's mother, that 
if she could get her boy far away from the giddy 
throng and lure of the city, he would reform and be- 
come a credit to his name and family. She had heard 
of the great free ranges of the west, where cattle fed 
on the sweet native grasses and fattened without any 
expense worth mentioning. It occurred to her that if 
her wayward boy could be induced to go out there where 
he would be widely separated from his old-time com- 
panions and kept busy looking after his grazing herd 
and communing with nature, he would forget his ac- 
quired thirst and likewise accumulate wealth, because 
the widow was inclined to be thrifty as well as anxious 
for the moral welfare of her son. "Stan" fell in with 
the idea readily enough, because there was in his blood 
a certain longing for adventure, and then, when out 
of reach of his mother, he would be freed from her 
chidings. 

So one day in the later seventies he landed at Medi- 
cine Lodge with enough money to buy a moderate sized 
herd of cattle and secured a range a few miles west 
of the frontier town. If Stan was separated from his 
old cronies, he had hardly more than landed in the 
cattle country until he began to associate himself with 
new ones, who, when the opportunity offered, could 
hit a fairly rapid pace themselves, and it may be re- 
marked in passing that Stan was generally well to the 
front of the procession. 

What his fond mother did not know was that while 
the bounding west, that part included in the great cat- 
tle ranges, did not boast of the ornate saloons where 
the devotees of Bacchus were wont to gather and per- 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 113 

form their libations, it was supplied with a brand of 
liquor of far-reaching and intensive power. Men who 
tarried with it long and often were apt to acquire a 
new variety of delirium tremens, under the influence 
of which their diseased imaginations not only beheld 
ordinary reptiles but prehistoric monsters — ichthyo- 
sauruses, dynastidans, pterodactyls, and mournful 
whangdoodles from the mountains of Hepsidam. Stan 
Parsons imbibed large quantities of the fluid commonly 
known in that section as "Hell's Delight," and was 
"stewed" most of the time. When the general quietude 
of the railroadless town of Medicine Lodge palled on 
him he would go to Hutchinson, where he would remain 
for days or even weeks in a condition of partial or total 
inebriation, his cattle meanwhile looking out for 
themselves. It is hardly necessary to say that his herd 
did not increase and multiply. 

In the fall of 1879 Rutherford B. Hayes, then presi- 
dent of the United States, decided to make an official 
tour of the country. The journey planned was the 
most extensive ever taken by a president up to that 
time. Accompanied by one or two members of his 
cabinet, his wife, Lucy, who some people were mean 
enough to say was the real president of the republic 
during Rutherford's term of office, General Sherman, 
and other notables, the presidential party crossed the 
continent, visited several of the Pacific coast cities and 
on the return trip passed through Kansas. This was 
the first time that a president had visited the Sun- 
flower state while in office and there was great interest 
in his journey. At that time there were many thou- 
sands of the men who had followed Sherman to the 
sea living in Kansas and they were especially elated 
at the prospect of meeting their old commander ; in fact 
Sherman received a more enthusiastic welcome, so far 
as Kansas was concerned, than the president. 



114 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Arrangements were made for a number of stops in 
the state, one of them at Hutchinson. In his day 
Rutherford B. Hayes was the most expert handshaker 
among public men. He had a way of reaching out and 
getting hold of the other fellow's hand and doing the 
shaking himself. This was done as a matter of self- 
protection, for if a public man at a general reception 
were to permit his hand to be gripped by a few thou- 
sand muscular and earnest sons of toil he would have 
little more use for that hand for weeks afterward. 
Hayes not only always took the initiative in the pub- 
lic handshaking, but he had the manner of a man who 
was grasping the hand of an old friend whom he had 
not seen for years. When the presidential train 
stopped at Hutchinson, Hayes took his place on the 
platform and the crowd formed in single file to pass 
and shake his hand or rather to let their hands be 
shaken. 

It happened that just at that time Stan Parsons 
was making one of his visits to the town on the 
Cowskin, and, noting the gathering crowd, went down 
to the depot with a somewhat hazy idea of finding out 
what it was all about. Once in the crowd he staggered 
into line and finally came to the President. Hayes, with 
his ingratiating, friendly smile and manner reached out, 
grasped Stan's hand, and shook it heartily. Stan 
paused, regarded Hayes from head to foot with drunken 
gravity, scratched his head in a vain endeavor to recol- 
lect, and finally said: "By G stranger, you seem 

to have the advantage of me. Seems to me that I ought 
to know your face, but damned if I can remember your 
name at all." 

Some Limbs of the Law 

I do not know whether it was the case with all fron- 
tier towns, but certainly in the early days of Medicine 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 115 

Lodge the legal profession was not taken seriously. 
There were no barriers to admission to the bar. The 
less a man knew the more readily he was admitted. 
If there was a suspicion that the applicant did know 
something about law, there might be some little curi- 
osity on the part of the committee appointed to ex- 
amine him as to his qualifications, to find out what 
he did know, but where it was entirely evident that the 
man applying for admission neither knew anything 
about law nor even suspected anything about it, the 
task of the examining committee was easy. The ex- 
amination consisted of just one question: "Are you 
ready and willing to set 'em up?" 

With this simple formality disposed of, the com- 
mittee on examination returned into court and re- 
ported that they had examined the applicant and found 
him well qualified for admission to the bar ; he had al- 
ready been admitted to one bar to their personal knowl- 
edge and had shown reasonable familiarity with the 
procedure there. Then the applicant held up his right 
hand, swore to support the Constitution of the United 
States and the Constitution of the state of Kansas and 
became, so far as the record was concerned, a full- 
fledged member of the legal profession. A good many 
men for one reason and another have an ambition to 
be called lawyers and to create the impression among 
those who do not know them well, that they are fa- 
miliar with the intricacies and technicalities of court 
procedure. So it came about that a good many men 
were admitted to the bar in that frontier town who 
neither knew anything about law or court practice then, 
nor afterward. Now there were some really able lawyers 
out there even in the early days. It might be supposed 
that they would have objected to the admission of these 
entirely unqualified men, but their viewpoint was this : 
Ninety per cent, of these persons would never dare to 



116 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

display their ignorance by coming into court, and the 
other ten per cent, who might have the nerve to un- 
dertake to practice would probably get so tangled up 
that they would be compelled to get a real lawyer to 
help them out and therefore these ignoramuses would 
really create business for attorneys who had some 
knowledge and skill. 

Once in a while a man who knew practically no law 
would hang out his sign, and even undertake to practice 
in J. P. courts. He would also get an appointment 
as notary public, and gather in a few dollars from 
taking acknowledgments and other notary work. 

One of these was H. Davis. Just how he man- 
aged to exist was something of a mystery, as he was 
never known, as I recollect, to do any work outside 
of his profession, and mighty little inside of it. True, 
he was frequently, I might say generally, financially 
embarrassed, but as this had become his normal con- 
dition, it did not seem to worry him any, although I 
recall one exception to this general rule. Davis had 
his laundry work done by a tall, angular lady from 
south Missouri or northern Arkansas, by the name of 
Mrs. Upperman. Mrs. Upperman was a female of 
vitriolic temper, and given at times to intemperate 
speech. The one sweet solace of her simple life was 
a cob pipe with an extra long stem. This pipe was a 
barometer, indicating with reasonable certainty when 
there was domestic calm or storm in the Upperman 
household. If Mrs. Upperman was feeling at peace 
with the world and her family, the smoke curled easily 
from the pipe and was emitted in regular puffs from 
her mouth and blown into graceful rings in the sur- 
rounding atmosphere; but if there was a storm brew- 
ing, the draft on the pipe was increased until the to- 
bacco burned a living coal and the smoke was emitted 
from her mouth in a cloud that nearly obscured the 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 117 

surrounding landscape. At such times her spouse, who 
like the lily of the field, generally toiled not and neither 
did he spin, being content to live on his wife's bounty, 
took warning from the signs he had learned to un- 
derstand, and hunted for more peaceful localities until 
the domestic storm had blown over. Davis' washing 
was not large. His financial circumstances tended to 
limit his wardrobe, but at that it cost a few cents to 
have a shirt and collar washed and ironed once a 
week, and for several weeks, with one excuse and an- 
other, he had put off the payment of his wash bill. 

The time came when the patience of Mrs. Upper- 
man was exhausted. She did not carry a large stock 
of patience at any time and then other things had just 
at that time made drafts on what little she had. She 
made up her mind that lawyer Davis would pay her 
that $1.50 he owed her or she would know the rea- 
son why. She was also in a frame of mind, as she 
said, to "take it out of his worthless hide" if he didn't 
come across. Her residence was down in the bottom 
and on a bright and cheerful morning she started on 
her quest for Davis. Her faithful pipe was drawing 
well and as she proceeded toward the place where the 
alleged lawyer had his office, a stream of smoke rolled 
back over her shoulder like the smoke from the engine 
of a heavy freight train on the upgrade. 

Davis saw her first and scented danger. He made 
a somewhat undignified retreat to what he called his 
office, a room in the only two-story building in the 
town, and locked and barricaded the door a minute or 
so before Mrs. Upperman reached there. The super- 
heated remarks of the wash lady poured through the 
keyhole, but elicited no reply in kind from Davis. She 
gave him an extended and vivid description of the vari- 
ous things she intended to do to him and also painted 
a word picture of how he would look after she got 



118 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

through with him. To make the matter worse, much 
worse in fact, Davis knew that she had a deep and 
earnest purpose to carry her threats into execution. 
He resorted at first to blandishments calculated to ap- 
peal to female vanity, but was informed through the 
keyhole that he needn't try any "soft soapin', honey 
fuglin' business" with her. The only way he could 
square himself was to dig up $1.50. There was noth- 
ing left but unconditional surrender. The impecunious 
notary public assured her that if she would let him 
out he would dig up the money, and it may be re- 
marked in passing that she stayed with him until he did. 
At that time the late Samuel R. Peters was judge 
of the district in which Barber County was included. 
To reach there he had to travel on a buckboard nearly 
a hundred miles and once for some reason he failed to 
arrive at the time designated by statute for the 
opening of the term. He had sent a letter requesting 
that some one be elected judge pro tern, until he could 
get there. The leader of the Medicine Lodge bar sol- 
emnly arose on the regular opening day of court and 
moved that Hon. Harve Davis be elected judge pro tern. 
The proposal was hailed with joy by those present and 
Davis was duly elected. He was nattered by the honor 
conferred, but after taking the seat usually occupied 
by the judge, was at a loss how to proceed. The lead- 
ing lawyer again rose and gravely said : "I move that 
this court do now adjourn." The judge pro tern, did 
not know much about court procedure but it ran 
through his mind that a motion to adjourn was always 
in order. "It is moved that this court do now adjourn. 
Is there a second to that motion?" asked the court. 
There was. "It is moved and seconded that this court 
do now adjourn. All in favor of that motion signify 
the same by saying aye." There was a loud chorus of 
ayes. "All opposed will signify the same by saying 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 119 

no. The ayes seem to have it and the court stands 
adjourned." 

Another individual admitted to the bar under the free 
and easy method I have mentioned was "Red," per- 
haps better known as "Skunk" Conner. Conner, a 
large, beefy individual who had a small herd of cattle 
down on the Medicine, was accustomed to add to his 
income by trapping skunks, which were quite plentiful. 
As a result of his devotion to the chase, when the wind 
was right a person with reasonably keen olfactories 
could detect his presence when he was still afar off. 
Some of his critics insisted that the reason he was 
so successful in trapping skunks was because they took 
him for a member of their tribe, and just naturally 
followed him, charmed by his smell, even as the animals 
of mythology followed Orpheus, charmed by the silver 
notes of his flute. 

Conner decided that he wanted to be admitted to 
the bar. There was difficulty in getting a committee 
to examine him, a number of members of the bar in- 
sisting that, even if "Skunk" agreed to set 'em up, the 
smell of him would spoil the taste of the "licker." He 
was, however, admitted, and while, so far as I know, 
he never undertook to conduct a case himself, he did 
become involved in litigation with some of his neighbor 
ranchmen and was defeated at the trial of the case. 
Here was his chance to show his knowledge of the law. 
"Well," he said to his attorney, "this isn't goin' to 
stop here. We will just get our witnesses together and 
go to the supreme court." 



"The Pilgrim Bard" 

Among the unique characters who settled in Barber 
County in the early seventies was Orange Scott Cum- 



120 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

mins, better known as the "Pilgrim Bard." He was 
born in the state of Ohio, but at the early age of two 
years, took his parents by their hands and moved 
west to the then wilderness of Iowa. Indians were 
plentiful and young redskins were often his playmates. 
When he grew to manhood he was possessed of a swar- 
thy complexion and jet black hair, which he permitted 
to grow long. In appearance he looked enough like 
an Indian to be mistaken for a member of the tribe. 
Indeed the story was at one time circulated that the 
Indians had taken a fancy to the Cummins child and 
exchanged one of their own children for it, a story 
so highly improbable that it was not worth consider- 
ing. When I first met the frontier poet he was en- 
gaged in the business of transporting the bones of the 
deceased buffalo to Wichita, then the greatest bone 
market in the world. He was addressing his mules 
in language that, at least prior to the late war, would 
not have been permissible in an Epworth League meet- 
ing, and while his style of profanity was strikingly ar- 
tistic, I did not know until afterward that I was listen- 
ing to the heartfelt expressions of a poetic soul. 

His cabin, or cottonwood shanty, was located on 
the banks of a clear running and beautiful little stream 
which bore the unromantic cognomen of "Mule Creek." 
He named his place the "Last Chance," because it was 
the last chance for pilgrims heading for the still fur- 
ther west to get a meal under a roof, for at this time 
beyond lay the untamed wilderness, stretching away to 
the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. 

His poems were suggested by environment, by cli- 
matic conditions, by the incidents of border life. In 
my opinion some of them rank up with some of the best 
productions of James Whitcomb Riley. Here, for ex- 
ample, is his "Ode to the March Wind" : 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 121 

When the old house keeps a rockin' 

Like as if 'twas goi-n' to fall; 
And the pebbles keep a knockin' — 
Knockin' 'gainst the fragile wall, 
Sets a feller thinkin' 

Of fell goblin,, wraith or fiend, 
Fancy into fancy linkin' 

Yet 'tis nothin' but the wind; 
Roar, roar, rattle door, 
Through each cranny in the floor, 
Through each crack and crevice small, 
Where a chigger scarce could crawl 
Every seam 'tis sure to find 
O beshrew the bleak March wind. 

All day long to feed the critters, 

I have tried my level best ; 
Tears my fodder into fritters, 

Splits the endgate of my vest; 
Almost sets a feller cussin' 

Yet too well I understand, 
If I ope' my mouth a fussin' 

'Twould soon fill with dust and sand ; 
Shriek, shriek, creak, creak — 
Seven long days in a week; 
Though my language seems unkind, 
Devil take the bleak March wind. 

While hauling bones to Wichita he camped one day 
on Smoots Creek in a blinding sand storm which 
prompted him to write the following: 

"O bury me not in the land of sand" 

The words came low from a granger man 

As he wearily sat down on the beam of his plow, 

His face was wan and his heart beat low. 

Battered and blowed for three years past 
By the raging wind and sandy blast, 
Until now he felt that the end was nigh, 
So he shut up his fists and gave up to die. 



122 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

"I could not sleep/' the granger said, 
"Where the wind and sand sweep o'er my head; 
O grant the request of a worn out man 
And bury me not in the land of sand." 

"I had ever hoped to be lowly laid, 
When my time had come, 'neath the paw-paw shade 
Where the loving hands of my own wife's kin 
Would dig a grave that wouldn't cave in." 

His faltering voice was failing fast ; 
It seemed each breath would be his last, 
His eyes had well nigh ceased to wink, 
When a passing freighter gave him a drink. 

Then he sprang to his feet with a sudden start, 
Unhitched from the plow and hooked onto the cart, 
His red headed women and children climb in 
And away they go to his own wife's kin. 

As he seized the whip in bony hand, 
"Farewell," said he, "to the land of sand; 
Farewell to the grave — I was just on its brink. 
May God bless the freighter who gave me the drink." 

In a more cheerful vein was his poem "When it 
Rains." 

I can hear the frogs a-croakin' 

While it rains, 
Tranquilly their hides are soakin' 

While it rains; 
And the beetle and the skeeter 
Singin' hymns to common meter, 
Ever sounds the chorus sweeter 

While it rains. 

I can see the small boy wadin' 

While it rains, 
Every muddy pool invadin' 

While it rains; 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 123 

And the bosom of his breeches 
To the muddy water reaches — 
Then his ma a lesson teaches 
While it rains. 

Hark! amid the thunder's rumblin' 

While it rains, 
Hear the chronic kicker grumblin' 

While it rains. 
Three days since his creak uncivil 
Told of drouth's impending evil, 
Now the mud just beats the devil 

While it rains. 

Solves the great financial trouble 

Glorious rain, 
Bursts full many a bogus bubble — 

Glorious rain, 
Keeps the dread hot winds from blowin' 
Keeps the monster crops a-growin' 
Keeps the farmer's hopes a-glowin' 

Bless the rain. 



Scott Cummins never held office so far as I know, but 
once. It is said that before landing in Barber County, 
he stopped for a little while at the then just beginning 
village of Wellington. There was a vacancy in the 
office of justice of the peace and the lawyers finally 
persuaded the poet to take the job. One of the first 
cases to be brought before Squire Cummins was filed 
by D. N. Caldwell. Caldwell was sick and J. M. 
Hoover attended to the case for him. On the other 
side were John G. Tucker and Mike Sutton, both now 
dead. The attorneys filed various motions which Cum- 
mins didn't understand and argued and wrangled for 
hours. Cummins at that time was keeping a hotel. 
When the dinner bell rang the wearied and disgusted 
justice announced that the court would adjourn until 



124 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

1 :30. Then straightening up he said, "Now that the 
court has adjourned I want to tell you d — n lawyers 
what I think of you. I told you to start with that 
I didn't have sense enough to be justice of the peace, 
but every one of you promised to help me. You have 
helped me, haven't you? Yes, you have helped me like 
h — 1." When 1 :30 came the justice didn't appear in 
the court room. After waiting an hour the lawyers 
sent a messenger after him. He sent back by the mes- 
senger this answer: "Tell them damned lawyers that I 
have resigned and say for them to go to hell." 



Phrenology under Difficulties 

Harking back through the mists of years it seems 
as if the humor of the frontier was somewhat crude 
and inconsiderate of the persons toward whom it was 
directed, but it must be acknowledged that it was 
characterized by a large degree of originality and spon- 
taneity. The frontiersman delighted in practical jokes 
and was decidedly careless about the effect on the nerves 
of the victim. The tenderfoot was hailed with joy, not 
because the seasoned and "hard-boiled" frontiersmen 
were anxious to welcome the stranger within their gates 
and show him honor, but because of the probability that 
he would furnish material for the particular kind of 
amusement in which they delighted and thus add to the 
joy of their existence. 

It was along in the middle seventies when phrenology 
was more of a vogue than it is at present, that an itin- 
erant lecturer strayed out as far as Dodge City and 
let it be known that he would give a more or less illus- 
trated lecture on the science of phrenology and demon- 
strate his ability to tell the character and adaptability 
of the people in his audience by examining their cranial 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 125 

development. Almost as soon as they had given him 
the look over it occurred to the crowd gathered for 
refreshments in the Long Branch saloon, that a kindly 
Providence had delivered into their hands a man who, 
if properly handled, would for an hour or two afford 
joyous relief from the tedium of their existence. It 
was immediately decided to have a committee wait on 
the "professor" and not only invite but urge him to 
give an exhibition of his knowledge in the "Red Light" 
dance hall that evening. 

The committee assured him that the town had long 
been waiting for a man of his profession to come and 
enlighten the public. They said that there were a lot 
of long-haired sons of mavericks about whom the peo- 
ple of Dodge were in doubt. There was a sort of 
general impression that maybe these persons were 
horse thieves, or if they were not already horse thieves, 
they might be heading that way and they wanted a man 
who understood phrenology to tell them, so that they 
would know what to do. They said that if these sus- 
pected parties were really horse thieves, or would nat- 
urally take to that business, it would save a lot of 
trouble and property just to hang them now, rather 
than let them go ahead and do a lot of damage and 
compel reputable citizens to quit their regular work 
of selling booze, dealing faro, roulette and the like 
and go out and hunt them up and hang them, and 
maybe get some good men shot up in the course of 
the festivities. 

The "professor" demurred against this radical kind 
of performance, saying that of course he would not like 
to be responsible for getting some man hung who really 
hadn't up to that time committed any crime but might 
perhaps have some natural tendencies in that direc- 
tion. The committee only became the more insistent. 
They said that they had been waiting for him for a 



126 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

good while. They declared that his fame had pre- 
ceded him and that the whole town had been putting 
off doing anything radical until he came; they had 
understood, they said, that he was heading that way. 
Furthermore, they informed him that now that he was 
there he simply couldn't dodge the responsibility. They 
intended to have him feel a lot of heads and tell just 
what was in them and if he didn't do it there were 
three or four men who had got a good deal worked 
up and anxious who might take a shot at him. The 
leader of the committee, Bat Masterson, said that of 
course the committee would do what they could to 
protect him, but they simply couldn't answer for his 
safety if he refused to give his lecture. On the other 
hand, they promised that if he would lecture they would 
not only see that he had a full house but that he could 
proceed without interruption, or if there was any in- 
terruption and gun play they would protect him. It 
was a serious alternative, but on the whole it seemed 
to the "professor" that it might be safer to go ahead 
and give his lecture than to incur the hostility of the 
town by refusing to give it. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the "professor" 
was greeted by a full house. There were a number of 
rather disquieting features about the meeting. For 
example, the hip of every man supported a six-shooter. 
He was conducted to the platform usually occupied by 
the orchestra which furnished the music for the dances. 
Bat Masterson presided and called the assembly to or- 
der. He told the crowd that he was going to intro- 
duce to them "Professor ," who probably had more 

knowledge of the science of phrenology than any other 
man in the United States, and who could tell as soon 
as he laid his hands on the head of a man all about his 
disposition, what he was good for, what kind of a 
man his great-grandfather was ; whether he was a cat- 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 127 

tie rustler or an honest man ; whether he would bluff on 
a single pair or lay down a full hand with queens at 
the top ; whether he was concealing the fact that he 
had a Mexican wife down on the trail — in short, could 
read the man just like an open book. 

It was the purpose of the meeting, said Bat, to call 
out some of the leading citizens to test out the knowl- 
edge of the phrenologist, and after that to have him 
tell about some men they had been wanting to know 
about, "and," said Bat, as he drew his gun and twirled 
it idly on his finger, "any son-of-a-sea-cook who under- 
takes to shoot out the lights while the 'professor' is 
speaking will get his." 

The "professor" was perspiring freely as he rose to 
commence his lecture. It was reasonably clear to him 
that no matter what he might say he was liable to 
make a mistake that might be fatal. He dwelt as long 
as possible on his introduction, told the crowd what he 
knew, and considerable that he didn't know about the 
science of phrenology, until there were signs of uneasi- 
ness and one long-haired man arose to say that it was 
about time this guy was getting down to cases. He 
said so far as he knew there wasn't a man in the crowd 
who had ever seen this feller whose picture the "pro- 
fessor" was showin', with his head divided up and num- 
bered with figures, and there was a lot of doubt about 
whether there was such a feller. What they wanted 
was to turn this "professor" loose on a man every- 
body knowed and see what he made out of him and 
they didn't propose to have any stalling or polly- 
foxing about it either. 

Bat ordered the long-haired citizen to sit down until 
it was his turn to play and then announced that the 
"professor" was ready to examine the head of a well- 
known citizen. As a matter of fact the professor was 
not ready, but he did not dare to say so and indicated 



128 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

that if any gentleman was willing to submit himself he 
would undertake to read his bumps. Immediately a 
well-known gunman, "Mysterious Dave," I think, 
stepped forward and took his seat on the platform. 
The professor had a hunch that his subject was a dan- 
gerous character and the perspiration increased. 

"This gentleman," he commenced in a rather uncer- 
tain voice, "has large perceptive faculties." 

"Cheese it, stranger," said Dave, as he rose from 
the chair and drew his gun. "I didn't come here to 
be insulted by no damn tenderfoot. I haven't none of 
them things you mention and never did." 

At this Bat Masterson drew his gun and ordered 
Mysterious Dave to sit down and have his head felt, 
saying that the professor could say just what he 
pleased and if there was to be any gun play he, Bat, 
would take a hand. 

Immediately the crowd began to take sides ; part with 
the chairman and part with "Mysterious Dave." When 
a few words had passed, one of the supporters of the 
latter commenced to shoot. Masterson answered 
promptly with his gun and in an incredibly short time 
all the lights were shot out and the room was in dark- 
ness except for the flash of the guns. Bat Masterson 
managed to convey the information to the "professor" 
that there was a rear exit and he had perhaps better 
make his get-away while he, Bat, held back the crowd. 
The "professor" needed no second invitation. It was 
a moderately dark night, but he found the railroad 
track and headed eastward. He was a weary but withal 
thankful man when he reached the first station this side 
of Dodge and lay down under the lee of the friendly 
station house, to wait for the first train he could board 
that would carry him back toward civilization and 
safety. 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 129 

The Pioneer Preacher 

The other day in running over some old newspaper 
files I noted the assignment of Methodist preachers for 
the Lamed district, back in 1879. Among the num- 
ber was Rev. J. A. Mattern, assigned to Medicine 
Lodge. Mattern really started the Methodist church 
in Medicine Lodge. True, there were a few Methodists 
among the early settlers and occasionally a Meth- 
odist preacher would wander out that way and hold 
services in the old frontier schoolhouse, but to Mattern 
must be given the credit for building the first church 
and getting the flock together as a permanent con- 
gregation. Mattern was not gifted with eloquent dic- 
tion nor was his mental equipment great. It may be 
said to his credit, however, that he did not pretend 
that he possessed either. He was just an humble la- 
borer in the vineyard, ready to go anywhere he was 
sent and to perform without complaint any drudgery 
that might be imposed upon him. 

His ambition was to build a church in the frontier 
town. There were not many Methodists there and what 
few there were, were not possessed of much wealth, 
but that fact did not discourage Mattern. He made 
arrangements with a man by the name of Hartzell 
to burn a kiln of brick to be used in making the walls 
of the church, and in the making of these brick he made 
a full hand and more. Day after day he shoveled the 
mud into the machine which ground the clay and 
moulded the brick, and then with an eager industry he 
helped to pile the moulded brick into the kiln. At 
night he helped to keep up the fires until at last the 
brick was burned. Then he toiled in loading the brick 
into wagons and hauling them to the site for the future 
meeting house. When it came to building the church 
Mattern was the most industrious and efficient man on 



130 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the job, so far as tending the masons was concerned. 
All day long he carried the hod with no thought of 
financial recompense and on Sunday conducted the 
regular services, morning and evening. His sermons 
were not models of either thought or diction, but the 
genuine earnestness and conscientiousness of the man 
won him many friends among the hardy men of the 
frontier. At last after months of the hardest kind 
of grueling toil the ambition of the humble preacher 
was realized. The church was completed and for the 
first time Medicine Lodge boasted of a house of wor- 
ship — and the church was made of brick. 

Rev. Bernard Kelly, better known as "Barney Kelly ," 
came down from Wichita to conduct the dedication 
services and also to collect the money necessary to lift 
the debt incurred in erecting the building. At that 
time, forty years ago, Barney was in his prime, be- 
tween forty and fifty years of age. He was as vigorous 
as a well-fed two-year-old colt and as full of sap as 
a sugar maple tree in the spring. As a collector of 
pledges at a dedication he had few equals and no 
superiors. He seemed to exercise a sort of hypnotic 
influence on men who were natural tightwads, and un- 
der the spell of his vigorous appeal they would obli- 
gate themselves to an extent which astonished their 
neighbors and which probably caused them some regret 
after they had come out from under the influence which 
induced them to make the promise. 

On the day of the dedication the new church was 
crowded to the doors, and Reverend Barney was at 
his best. I think I never saw a man perspire so 
freely or with more effect. Those who are acquainted 
with this well known divine know that a distinguishing 
feature of his countenance is a nose of Grecian archi- 
tecture and rather remarkable length. As he warmed 
to his work he left the pulpit proper and paced back 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 131 

and forth just behind the altar rail. The perspira- 
tion trickled from the end of his olfactory organ like 
sugar water dripping from the spile in a fresh tapped 
maple tree and splashed on the heads of those who 
had been crowded into the front row. A baldheaded 
man or two who happened to be crowded up against 
the outer edge of the altar rail, protested mildly 
against the involuntary baptism, but for the most part 
the audience was so interested in the fervent appeal that 
they paid no attention to the gentle shower of perspira- 
tion and felt, no doubt, that they were simply sitting, 
as it were, under "the drippings of the sanctuary." 

At that time I was young and single and not affili- 
ated with the Methodist church or any other, but had 
been attracted to the service, perhaps largely through 
curiosity. Rev. Barney Kelly did not know me, but 
some one had pointed me out to him as the editor of 
the town paper. I had taken a seat pretty well back 
beside one of the young matrons of the town, who 
was accompanied by an active and interesting child 
about two years old. The baby thought I looked 
friendly and climbing up on my lap was busily engaged 
in examining my neck-tie of somewhat loud and inhar- 
monious pattern. 

Pledges were commencing to come thick and fast 
when it suddenly occurred to Elder Kelly that there 
was no secretary to make a record of them. Looking 
over the crowd, he said: "Here, we must have a sec- 
retary. I see brother McNeal, the young editor of 
your local paper, sitting back there. Here, brother 
McNeal, just put your child over on its mother's lap 
and come forward and take down these subscriptions." 

In a frontier town and neighborhood everybody 
knows everybody else and all of them knew me. In- 
stantly that house of worship was filled with unholy 
mirth, the loud and coarse laughter of the rude men 



132 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

from the range, mingling with the shrill cachinations 
of the female part of the audience. Personally I did 
not join in the hilarity and neither did the mother of 
the baby, but we two formed the entire minority. Bar- 
ney saw that he had made a mistake but was not 
dashed in the least, only remarking that if brother 
McNeal was not married he ought to be and then 
returned to the work in hand : "Who is the next brother 
who wants to have the privilege of subscribing $50?" 

During the years which have come and gone since 
that day, the Rev. Barney Kelly has told this story 
frequently and with great enjoyment, but I have ob- 
served that in later years he is getting his dates mixed. 
The last time I heard him tell the story he said that 
on that occasion he met the town marshal, Jerry 
Simpson, who introduced himself and said: "I suppose 
you are brother Kelly who has come down to dedicate 
our church?" 

Barney said that he was much impressed with the 
appearance of Jerry and told the Republican politi- 
cians when Jerry was nominated for Congress that he 
was a dangerous opponent and that unless they put up 
a great campaign he would be elected. The fact was, 
however, that Jerry did not come to the county for 
three years after the church was dedicated and was 
not appointed town marshal for ten years after the 
dedication, and furthermore Jerry was a well known 
heretic both in politics and religion who didn't care a 
hoot whether there was any church. 

In reading over this story I observe that the Rev. 
Mr. Mattern seems to have sort of faded out of it, but 
that really was characteristic of the man. He was 
ready any time to efface himself, glad of the oppor- 
tunity to be just an humble gleaner in the vineyard. 
I have often wondered what has become of him. 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 133 

An Early-Day Murder and Man Hunt 

In the spring of 1878, George W. Bowyer, a farmer 
and stockman, of Sumner County, accompanied by his 
wife, her sister, and a Texan who just then went by 
the name of Charlie Lee, started for Texas to buy 
a herd of cattle. At Coles City, Texas, Bowyer pur- 
chased 350 head of cattle and headed north for his 
Sumner County pasture with the party made up as 
it was when they left Kansas. Bowyer did not know 
that his herder was an ex-convict, who had served 
at least one term in the Texas penitentiary. If he 
had, he perhaps would not have employed him and he 
might have saved his own life. However, in those 
days it was not the custom to inquire closely into 
the past lives of men, especially when employing herd- 
ers for the Texas trail. 

Lee seems to have been a hardened criminal with 
no sense of shame. Mrs. Bowyer complained to her 
husband of Lee's conduct, especially as it related to 
the other woman. The only effect of this on Lee was 
to excite his enmity toward Mrs. Bowyer and elicit 
the threat that he intended to get even. He also con- 
fided to the other herder that when they reached a 
certain point in the territory, he, Lee, intended to 
kill Bowyer, take possession of the herd of cattle, drive 
them back to Texas, sell them, and appropriate the 
money. The threat was communicated to Bowyer, who, 
when they reached the place in the territory mentioned 
by Lee, faced the desperado and demanded that he 
disarm or leave camp. If Bowyer had been entirely 
conversant with the habits of desperadoes, he would 
not have made the demand except at the point of a 
gun. The lack of this precaution cost him his life. 
The ex-convict was a trifle quicker on the draw and 
a better shot than Bowyer, who fell dead in the arms 



134 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of his wife, a bullet through his brain. Not satisfied 
with this, Lee fired two more shots into the dead body. 

Other campers located near by heard the shooting, 
came to the camp of the Bowyers, and helped the deso- 
lated wife to bury her dead by the side of the trail, 
while Lee, with almost incomparable insolence and 
bravado, took charge of the herd of the man he had 
murdered, in spite of the protests of the widow. Ar- 
riving at Pond Creek, Lee seems to have changed his 
mind, abandoned the herd and rode on to Kansas, still 
brazenly indifferent about the crime he had committed 
until the news was conveyed to him that an impromptu 
vigilance committee of Bowyer's neighbors were pre- 
paring to hang him. Hearing this, Lee fled. 

Then commenced one of the most prolonged and 
remarkable man hunts in the history of the frontier. 
Joe Thralls was then a young man of Herculean build, 
with a wide knowledge of the western country and of 
frontier character. He made no pretensions of being 
a great detective, and was not given to spectacular 
methods, but he possessed what is known as bulldog 
tenacity and courage. He set out with one purpose 
in mind and that was to find the desperado, Lee, and 
bring him to justice. Time and the difficulties in the 
way did not daunt or trouble him. It might be a year ; 
it might be two before he would run the murderer to 
earth, but he had no doubt whatever that he would 
get him in the end. 

For nine months the big, quiet young frontiersman 
kept on the trail of the murderer. He traced him 
through the Flint hills and nearly captured him in the 
neighborhood of Independence, but Lee managed to slip 
out of the trap and into the hills of southern Mis- 
souri. Thralls chased him out of there, back into Kan- 
sas ; across the plains into Colorado ; through the 
mountains and desert lands down into New Mexico ; 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 135 

across the border into old Mexico. Back the fugitive 
turned and again crossed the border, this time into 
Texas, with Thralls still following with dogged per- 
sistence. Sometimes for a little while he would lose 
the trail for a day or two, only to find it again and 
hunt the fugitive from one hiding-place to another. 
The Texan managed to reach the cattle camps of 
the Panhandle of Texas, then an ideal hiding-place for 
men of his stripe. In a cattle camp he supposed that 
he was securely hidden, but somehow the young deputy 
marshal located him. It meant a ride of hundreds of 
miles through an almost trackless wilderness and alone. 
It was a journey beset with danger, but there was no 
hesitation. There was a certain fascination in the 
business of keeping order along the border. It was a 
life crowded full of adventure and danger. The man 
hunter never knew what odds he might have to meet 
or at what moment he might be looking in the muzzle 
of a gun held by some one of the men he was hunting; 
men who had no regard for human life, who would kill 
him with as little compunction as they would kill a dog. 
Men of the type of Thralls, however, did not hesitate 
on account of the hardships or dangers. They seemed 
rather to welcome them. The life would have been per- 
haps unbearably lonesome if it had not been full of 
danger. I suppose it was this feeling that impelled 
Joe Thralls to ride thousands of miles through almost 
trackless mountains and over burning deserts on the 
trail of a man who he knew would kill him without 
hesitation or warning if he believed he could do it 
and escape. 

Just how Joe Thralls escaped he does not know, but 
somehow he did and just ten months after the Sum- 
ner County ranchman, Bowyer, had fallen dead in the 
arms of his wife, the big deputy marshal walked into 
a cow camp near the Panhandle border, covered Lee 



136 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

with his gun, quietly told him he was his prisoner, put 
the irons upon him, and started back on the long ride 
to Sumner County, Kansas. Lee was sent to Fort 
Smith for trial and managed somehow to get off with 
a sentence of ten years for second degree murder. In 
the course of three or four years he was pardoned 
out. Of his further history I have no record. He prob- 
ably either managed to break into some other peniten- 
tiary or get himself killed in some frontier brawl. 

There was a curious aftermath of this tragedy of 
the trail. The body of Bowyer was buried temporarily 
on the north bank of the Red River. Several months 
afterward his widow made arrangements to have the 
body taken up and moved to the home burying ground 
in Sumner County. When the body was exhumed it 
was found, to the astonishment of those who dug it up, 
to be in an almost complete state of petrifaction and 
weighed about seven hundred pounds. 



A Partisan Tombstone 

In these days when party ties are so loosened that 
it is next to impossible to find a man who does not 
scratch his ticket, it is hard to realize the rigid par- 
tisanship of only a third of a century ago. In those 
old days, the man who scratched his ticket was re- 
garded as a political heretic and traitor to his party. 
All the party bosses had to do was to see that the 
ticket was fixed up to their liking ancl the rank and 
file could be depended upon to vote it straight. 

Among the hardy and estimable men who settled 
in Barber County on the edge of Harper County back 
in the late seventies or early eighties were Nathaniel 
Grigsby and his son, Elias Grigsby. The names indi- 
cate the Puritan strain in the Grigsby blood. If they 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 137 

had lived in the days of Cromwell they would have been 
followers of that remarkable man, who organized an 
army of religious fanatics, the most dauntless fighters 
who ever followed a leader in battle. Born in 1811, 
when the Civil War broke out Nathaniel Grigsby, al- 
though even then well beyond the military age, 
promptly joined the colors and together with his son or 
sons, fought through the war, rising to the rank of 
second lieutenant. Nathaniel Grigsby was a man of 
positive convictions, religiously and politically. 

He was a Republican without variableness or shadow 
of turning. To his mind, politically speaking, the Re- 
publican party was summum bonum, while the Demo- 
cratic party was malum in se. Whatever there was of 
good in the political acts of the past third of a cen- 
tury, he attributed to the Republican party, and what- 
ever there was of evil to the malign influence of the 
Democratic organization. With most men political ac- 
tivity stops with the grave, but old Nathaniel Grigsby, 
as the weight of years bowed his back and the frosts of 
time silvered his hair, knowing that his years were 
nearly numbered, devised a plan by which his political 
opinions might be transmitted to coming generations, 
carved in imperishable granite, to be read long after 
his mortal body had returned to the earth from which 
it came and his spirit had joined the immortals. He 
carefully prepared the inscription for his tombstone 
and exacted the promise that it should be graven on 
the shaft which marked his grave. 

In the quiet graveyard near the little town of Attica 
lies the body of Nathaniel Grigsby and on the head- 
stone the curious observer may read these words : 

"N. Grigsby, 2d Liu't Co. G, 10th Indiana Volunteers. 
Died April 16, 1890. Age 78 years, 6 months and 5 days." 

"Through this inscription I wish to enter my dying 
protest against what is called the Democratic party. I 
have watched it closely since the days of Jackson and 



138 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

know that all the misfortunes of our nation have come to 
it through this so-called party of treason.'' 

Below this inscription is added a postscript which 
says, "This inscription is placed here by the request 
of the deceased." 

Hardly had the clods fallen on the coffin of old Na- 
thaniel Grigsby before the state of Kansas was shaken 
by a political upheaval which for the time being de- 
stroyed the Democratic party in the state as an organi- 
zation and reduced the Republican party to a minority 
in Kansas, the stronghold of its power. If the disem- 
bodied spirit of the old veteran was able to view the 
things of earth from another world he must have 
viewed with astonishment the political revolution which 
swept over the state of his adoption and observed the 
strange political bedfellows resulting. Had he lived 
a quarter of a century longer he would have witnessed 
the passing of the old political order, the loosening of 
party bonds, and the framing of party platforms so 
nearly alike in all essentials that with the changing of 
heads and a few stock phrases, one might have been 
substituted for the other and each supported with equal 
enthusiasm. Perhaps the old soldier would have 
changed with the times, and if so a different inscription 
would have been carved upon his granite monument. 

As it is, I doubt that a search of all the graveyards 
from Maine to California would reveal so unique and 
peculiar an epitaph. 



The Gambler Who Tempted Fate 

There are still old-timers living who remember Bob 
Louden, the gambler, who operated in most of the fron- 
tier towns back in the early seventies. They speak 
of him as a king among his class. Handsome, mag- 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 139 

nificently proportioned, reckless, and vain, he was the 
sort of man who appealed to women of sentimental 
turn of mind : the kind of man for whom some foolish 
girl would sacrifice her honor and endure abuse in or- 
der that she might enjoy his capricious and temporary 
favor. The gambler of the Bob Louden type was never 
constant in his attachments. His liaisons were 
prompted by passion and caprice and when another 
woman attracted his attention and suited his fancy, he 
cast off the former companion with no more compunc- 
tion than he would have in discarding a worn out 
garment. 

With the women of his class it was often different. 
Very often one of them would shower upon the reck- 
less and dissolute companion a love and devotion which 
were tragic and pitiful. She would endure for him all 
kinds of abuse ; slave for him, turn over to him the reve- 
nues of her sin and only ask in return the poor privi- 
lege of basking in his smiles and his occasional com- 
panionship. Sometimes, however, the gambler pre- 
sumed too much on his power over the woman and her 
dog-like devotion. When she became convinced that 
he had cast her off, she was likely to become filled with 
a fierce jealousy that would stop at no crime in order 
to satisfy her desire for vengeance. 

According to the opinions of those who knew her, one 
of the most striking appearing women of the under 
world in the city of Cincinnati during the year 1870 
or 1871 was one known by the name of Carrie Baxter. 
Quite likely that was not her real name, but it was the 
one by which she was known. Tall, voluptuous and 
dowered with almost classic features, she walked a queen 
among the women of her class. Bob Louden, the gam- 
bler, was attracted by her beauty, her tigerish grace, 
and her ability. She was equally attracted by him. 
Together they journeyed to the new city of Omaha, 



140 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

where Bob plied his trade in the frontier gambling 
places and his companion became the most skillful shop- 
lifter who had ever operated in the then frontier, now 
the great middle West. 

What caused the break between them is not known, 
or at any rate was not generally told. Perhaps he 
grew tired of her as he had grown tired of many 
others. Possibly there came to her mind the possi- 
bility of reformation and restoration to a place in 
society such as her natural ability and beauty fitted her 
to fill. At any rate they separated. She went to 
Denver, where she got a place as saleswoman in a dry 
goods store and afterward became a delivery clerk in 
the postoflice. 

The monotony, however, palled on her. She began 
to long for the bright lights and excitement of the 
old life she had forsaken, and quit her job, but not 
to become merely an inmate of some gilded palace of 
sin. Her idea was to lead a more profitable and 
independent career as a confidence woman, setting her 
net to catch the foolish fish among the human kind. 

How she happened to land in Hays City, I do not 
know, perhaps because at that time it was the loca- 
tion of one of the important army posts and because 
for one reason and another there had been attracted 
there a good many men in search of adventure, some 
of them reckless, degenerate sons of rich sires, some 
merely young fools who had money but were lacking 
in brains and judgment. 

The ex-shoplifter and once leader of the Cincinnati 
demimonde played her part well. She was no common 
street walker painted and bedizened, parading her 
charms and soliciting patronage from the passing 
stranger. She was, on the contrary, a woman of strik- 
ing appearance who carried herself with reserve and 
dignity and in that frontier town where no inquiries 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 141 

were made concerning past records or antecedents, 
she seems to have been admitted into the best society. 

The hotel proprietor gave a ball, to which were in- 
vited the elite of the town: the officers from the mili- 
tary post, dressed in the ornate, striking uniforms 
worn by army officers of that time; the rich adven- 
turers, some of them the sons of titled Englishmen; 
and the rest of the upper crust of frontier society. To 
this ball was also invited the ex-shoplifter and former 
leader of the underworld of Cincinnati. Sailing under 
another name, regal in her grace and animal beauty, she 
was the most striking figure among the company gath- 
ered in the parlors of the frontier hostelry. 

Social lines were not closely drawn and there was 
no surprise manifested because some well known gam- 
blers were also among the guests. Of these no one 
was more striking than the tall, handsome gambler, 
Bob Louden. His former paramour, it seemed, had not 
known that he was in Hays City; possibly he did not 
know until he came to the ball that she was there. If 
he had been wise enough to make no demonstration, 
there would have been no tragedy, but he had been 
imbibing rather freely for him, not an altogether com- 
mon thing, for like most professional gamblers he did 
not usually drink to excess. He may also have con- 
cluded that it would be a satisfaction to humiliate 
publicly this woman who had been his one-time partner 
in crime and also his willing slave. He sought her out. 
Her face paled, but she did not quail, for she was a 
creature of magnificent control. Then Bob Louden 
made the fatal mistake of flouting her in public and 
with insulting language calling attention to her former 
relations and her shame. Suddenly her hand slipped 
into the pocket of her dress, where she carried a small 
derringer. There was a blinding flash, a loud report, 
and Bob Louden, the gambler, fell dead with a bullet 



142 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

through his heart. There was a trial of some kind 
at which the woman was promptly acquitted, for ac- 
cording to the code of the border, she was justified. 
According to border justice the gambler had brought 
this on himself and had to take the consequence. He 
had no business to interrupt the festivities of the occa- 
sion by calling up old relationships and insulting the 
woman who, to say the least, was no worse than he. 
So they buried Bob Louden and let the woman go. 

It was perhaps a year after the trial that two men 
were standing on one of the streets of Atchison when 
a tall, well-groomed woman passed them. "What a 
striking looking woman," exclaimed one of the men. 

"By she looks like a goddess and moves like a 

queen." 

"I might also add," said the other man dryly, "that 
she shoots as straight as she stands. That is the woman 
who put a bullet through the heart of Bob Louden, the 
gambler and gunman, at the Hays City society ball." 



Pete and Ben 

The business of the cattle ranges developed a class 
of nomads, carefree, reckless, taking little or no 
thought for the morrow. The range had certain un- 
written rules of hospitality that made it permissible 
for an entire stranger to stop at any cattle camp at 
mealtime, unsaddle his horse and either "hobble" it or 
"lariat" it on the prairie or even give it a feed of corn 
if it needed it, and then, without question or objection, 
"sit in" and help himself to "grub." All the nomad 
needed in way of an outfit was a horse, saddle and sad- 
dle blankets, a bridle, quirt and lariat rope. Money 
was not necessary, as he did not expect to pay for 
what he got in the way of food or lodging, but if he 



PICTURESQUE FIGURES 143 

wanted a job he could generally get it as a line rider. 

Typical of this class were two brothers, Pete and 
Ben Lampton. Sometimes they worked ; generally they 
did not, but there was never any indication of worry 
over their financial condition. Pete, the elder, was 
a companionable sort of hobo, a most cheerful liar, 
never at a loss for conversation, void of conscience 
as a coyote, and with the gall of a lightning-rod ped- 
dler. Ben was of duller mentality, and followed the 
plans originated by Pete instead of doing his own 
thinking. In 1874 there was an Indian scare along the 
border. There generally was, for that matter. In 
fact, the cattle men saw to it that if there were no 
genuine Indian scare, one was manufactured, in order 
to discourage the immigration of grangers to spoil the 
free range. 

In 1874 there seemed to be some actual danger of 
an outbreak and a militia company was organized at 
Medicine Lodge to protect the border. It was a com- 
pany of mounted scouts, each one of whom was sup- 
posed to furnish his own horse and bedding, the state 
furnishing the arms and food, with an understanding 
that the members of the company would be compen- 
sated for outfits furnished. Among those who joined 
was Pete Lampton; not that he was concerned about 
protecting the border, but it meant free grub for a 
time and possibly some adventure. 

At the time the company was organized, the days 
were reasonably warm, but the nights were often un- 
comfortably cool. Another member of the company 
was one M. Palmer, who resided near the head waters 
of Bitter Creek and who had been a soldier in the 
Civil War. Palmer was not abundantly supplied with 
bedding and when it came time to camp for the night, 
he called out, asking who wanted to bunk with him. "I 
am your huckleberry," answered Pete Lampton. 



144 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Palmer spread down such bedding as he had while 
Pete stood by, a rather indifferent onlooker. "Well," 
said Palmer, "where are your blankets?" 

"Blankets?" said Pete; "I haven't any blankets. If 
I had blankets of my own, why the hell do you suppose 
I would want to sleep with you?" 

Once when the Lampton brothers happened to have 
cash and were camping in the grove at the edge of town, 
Pete bought a dozen eggs at the store kept by one D. E. 
Sheldon, for twenty-five cents. In the course of an 
hour or two he came back and gravely handed Sheldon 
$2.25. Asked for an explanation, he said, "all them 
eggs had chickens in 'em and my understanding is that 
spring chickens are worth $2.50 a dozen. I ain't aimin' 
to take no advantage of you, Sheldon, and here is 
the chicken price. 5 



» 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 

A Fake Election 

The inhabitants of a frontier town 100 miles re- 
moved from a railroad, were necessarily deprived 
of the ordinary opportunities for entertainment 
and as a result compelled to rely on their own resources. 
This developed an originality that I have never seen 
equaled in any old settled community. The individual 
who proposed some new practical joke always found 
an abundance of enthusiastic assistants to carry it 
into effect and if the joke panned out as anticipated, 
the originator was regarded as a public benefactor. 
Among the earliest settlers in the Elm Creek val- 
ley was Jacob Frazier, a Missourian by birth, who for 
some inscrutable reason had been induced to migrate 
from the land of his nativity, to the then almost un- 
inhabited frontier. Jake was possessed neither of any 
"book laming," nor of a capacity to have acquired 
any considerable amount if he had had the opportu- 
nity. Politically he was a Democrat, without variable- 
ness or shadow of turning, and did not believe in mix- 
ing either his whisky or his politics. True, Jake did 
not manifest much interest in politics except to vote 
on election day. He did not trouble himself about po- 
litical issues, in fact would not have recognized a po- 
litical issue if he had met it in the middle of the 
road ; all he asked was to be handed a Democratic bal- 
lot and the privilege of depositing it in the box. 

145 



146 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

It was when St. John was still the leader of the 
Republican political machine in Kansas, the valiant and 
most noted apostle of the then new doctrine of con- 
stitutional prohibition, that Jake Frazier for some rea- 
son failed for once to get to the election and cast his 
vote. This omission was the more remarkable because 
for once Jake had more than a mere inherited interest 
in the election. The Democratic party was opposed 
to prohibition and that stand met with his entire and 
enthusiastic approval. The attempt of St. John and 
the Republican party to deprive a man of his "licker," 
he regarded as a most diabolical attack on his inalien- 
able rights, and the mere mention of it caused him 
to fairly boil with indignation, the boiling being ma- 
terially hastened by several drinks. But for some rea- 
son on that fall day Jake failed to appear and cast 
his vote. The following day he came to town and, 
being asked why he had failed to come and vote, ex- 
pressed his regret earnestly and profanely, "Specially 
as he wanted to vote agin this here damn prohibitioner 
law." 

"Well, it was too bad," said his interviewer, "that 
you couldn't get in yesterday, but it's all right anyway, 
as we are going to have another election to-day and 
you can vote just the same." 

Jake was surprised but delighted, and wanted to 
know where the election was being held. He was di- 
rected to the livery stable, where he found what they 
told him was the election board and a couple of clerks, 
also a cigar box to receive the ballots. A number of 
citizens came in and deposited their ballots, several of 
them being challenged on one ground and another, 
which challenges caused considerable bickering and 
threats of violence on the part of the challenged. Jake 
wanted to know where he could get a Democratic bal- 
lot and was furnished with an unused ballot of the 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 147 

previous day; that was before the day of the Aus- 
tralian ballot. 

He came up and offered his vote to one of the judges, 
a man whom he had known for years, and was sur- 
prised to be asked to state his name, age, where he 
was born, what was his wife's name, age, and color of 
her hair; if his mother-in-law was still living and if 
so where and why ; if he kept any dogs and what church 
if any he belonged to. As the questions were asked 
with the greatest gravity Jake's indignation grew in 
volume. He called the attention of the election judge 
to the fact that he had been personally acquainted 
with him for years and knew all about him "without 
askin' all these damn fool questions." 

Finally the election judges seemed to be satisfied in 
regard to his qualifications and were about to receive 
his ballot when one of the framers of the play stepped 
up and declared that he challenged the vote. "On what 
ground?" asked the judge sternly. "On the ground 
that he is an alien. He confesses that he was born in 
Missouri and hasn't shown any naturalization papers." 
The judges gravely consulted together for a few mo- 
ments and then the spokesman asked, "Mr. Frazier, 
have you any naturalization papers?" 

"Naturalization papers?" yelled Jake. "What's 
them? Never heerd of such a thing. I kin prove that 
I was borned in Pike County, Missouri, but I hain't 
got no papers to prove it here. But you know well 
enough that I hev been votin' for more than forty years 
and you've seen me vote more times than you hev fin- 
gers and toes." 

"Can't help what you have done in the past, Mr. 
Frazier," said the relentless election judge, "law is law. 
The law is plain that a Missourian must be naturalized 
before he can vote in Kansas." 

The old man went away crying with rage and mor- 



148 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

tification. He met an old acquaintance and said: 
"What do you think them damn prohibitioner Repub- 
licans did?" The friend didn't know. "Well, sir, they 
channeled my vote, that's what they did, yes, sir, stood 
right there and channeled my vote because they said 
I was ailin' and must have naturalization papers be- 
cause I was born in Missouri. I've been votin' the Dem- 
ocratic ticket for more than forty years and this is the 
first time my vote was ever channeled." 

The hearer expressed deep sympathy and indigna- 
tion; said that it was an infernal plot to cheat him 
out of his political rights and that he didn't propose 
to stand for it. He would see whether an old citizen 
like Jake Frazier could be cheated out of his rights 
that way. Then the indignant defender of political 
rights proceeded to organize a mob. He gathered fol- 
lowers fast. Some were armed, some were not, but 
all expressed themselves as determined to avenge the 
wrong done an old citizen, just because he was a Demo- 
crat and an anti-prohibitionist. 

The mob selected a spokesman who, at the head of 
the eager throng, went to the livery stable and de- 
manded the reason for refusing the vote of an old and 
well known resident. The election judges protested 
that they had no feeling against Frazier, but according 
to his own statement he was born in Missouri and 
could not show that he had ever been naturalized. The 
champion of Frazier furiously denounced this decision 
and calling on a lawyer, who was with the party, had 
him cite decisions of the supreme court holding that 
Congress by an enabling act had naturalized all Mis- 
sourians who had taken up their residence in other 
states. After a long and heated argument the judges 
declared that while they were not entirely satisfied, 
if Jake would swear in his vote his ballot would be 
received. A long and involved oath was then admin- 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 149 

istered, the vote duly deposited, and Jake departed for 
home in triumph, declaring that no durned prohibi- 
tioner Republican could channel his vote and get away 
with it. 

In such manner was the tedium of life on the border 
relieved and the joy of life enhanced. 



When an Indian Agency Came Near Being Wiped Out 

The fall of the year 1880 was as mild and beautiful 
as Kansas falls generally are. There was a wonderful 
fascination in the wide open spaces of the range coun- 
try, and as a couple of Medicine Lodge ranchmen were 
going down into the Canadian country to hunt for 
horses I accepted an invitation to ride with them. I 
have said that there was a wonderful fascination in 
the wide open spaces, and there was, but when a man 
who is soft and unaccustomed to riding sits twelve 
hours in a saddle on the back of a horse, trotting 
most of the time, the novelty and charm mostly wear 
off, also the rider has a disinclination to sit down for 
several days afterward. But once started on a ride of 
that kind, there was no rest for the tenderfoot. After 
that twelve-hour ride and a few hours' rest on the buf- 
falo grass we were up at daylight for another day's 
ride, and continued for a week. Our objective was 
Darlington, where the Indian agency was located and 
from there we followed up the North Canadian to 
Camp Supply. It is possible that, if we had known 
what was going on at the agency, the horse hunt might 
have been postponed and this story would never have 
been written. 

During the administration of General Grant as presi- 
dent, he conceived the idea of putting the Indian agen- 
cies in charge of the Quakers, actuated no doubt by 



150 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

the story of William Penn and his dealings with the 
red men. President Hayes continued the policy of 
Grant to a considerable extent and that accounted for 
the fact that Miles was in charge of the agency at 
Darlington in the fall of 1880. At that time this 
agency had charge of the Cheyennes who had been 
moved down from their northern home, the Arapahoes, 
and some of the Kiowas. Three years before a dis- 
satisfied band of the Cheyennes under the leadership 
of Chief Dull Knife, had left the reservation and, trav- 
eling northward through Kansas, had left a trail 
marked by burnings and massacre. Dull Knife and 
most of his followers had been captured, but there was 
still a dissatisfied element among the Cheyennes, who 
wanted to start on another raid toward the old hunting 
grounds. 

It was the custom in those days to distribute the 
government allowance of beeves to the Indians on a 
certain day of the week, Monday, as I recall. The 
Indians were divided into bands and to each band 
was allotted so many beeves. The beeves were turned 
out on the prairie and the Indians ran them down and 
killed them Indian fashion and carried the meat to 
their camps. Agent Miles had made an order that each 
band must send its representatives and get its beef al- 
lotment on the regular issue day, or, failing to do that, 
the band would get no beef that week. Some two weeks 
before we arrived at Darlington some of the bands had 
failed to send their representatives on the regular issue 
day and when they appeared the next day and wanted 
their allotment of beef Agent Miles refused to give 
it to them. They left the agency sullen and vengeful. 
Agent Miles had at the time a fine driving team and 
buggy and it was his custom, in the beautiful evenings 
of the early fall, to drive out along the government 
road that ran along beside the Canadian River. That 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 151 

evening lie drove out as usual, accompanied by his 
wife. When four or five miles from the agency two 
young Indian bucks stepped out into the road, stopped 
him, and told him that unless he changed his order 
about the beef issue they would kill him. As there 
was little doubt they would have put the threat into 
execution, there was nothing for the agent to do but 
yield. The next day the bands which had been refused 
their allotment came in and got it, but the day fol- 
lowing Miles sent a number of his Indian police out to 
arrest the leaders of these recalcitrant bands and bring 
them to the agency. The young warriors stood off 
the police and refused to be arrested, but told the 
police to tell the agent they would be at the agency 
the following day. 

The following day they came all right, but they 
came six hundred strong, all armed with Winchesters 
which had been furnished by the Government. They 
were nearly all young men, the flower of the Cheyenne 
tribe, as fearless and desperate fighters as there were 
among the tribes of the plains. It was their intention 
to clean up the agency and massacre the agent and 
all the other whites who were there. They dragged 
Miles out of the agency building and probably would 
have started the killing if it had not been for the cool- 
ness and courage of an Indian chief. Little Chief had 
himself been at one time known as a "bad Indian." 
He was one of the Indians sent by the Government to 
the Dry Tortugas, where he had been kept for several 
years. The experience had completely cured him of 
any desire to make war on the whites and from the 
time he was returned to the reservation, he was a con- 
sistent advocate of peace with the white man and the 
education and industrial development of his people. 
He finally was converted to Christianity, joined the 
Presbyterian Church, and became a ruling elder in that 



152 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

denomination. At the time on that fall day when a 
massacre seemed certain, Little Chief pushed his way 
into the crowd of infuriated warriors and began to talk 
to them. 

"You can kill the agent and all the whites there are 
here," he said. "Maybe you can kill all the soldiers 
there are at the fort over there." (There was a small 
garrison of about one company stationed at Fort Reno 
at the time.) "But that will do you no good. I have 
been across the white man's country and I know that 
the white men are as many as the leaves of the forest. 
You have a few guns ; they have many thousand. If 
you kill the agent and these white men you will all be 
hung. You will not be shot as brave warriors are shot, 
but you will be hung like dogs. I, Little Chief, know 
this and you know that I have never told you lies." 

Perhaps some of the more reckless and daring would 
have ignored the advice of Little Chief, but he had 
made an impression on the leaders and after all it was 
the mob-spirit that dominated. A mob will not act 
without leadership. The situation was saved and a 
bloody massacre was averted. Another man who prob- 
ably also helped to avert the catastrophe was George 
Bent, the halfbreed son of the noted trader, who built 
Bent's fort on the upper Arkansas in Colorado. There 
was not much to be said for Bent, if reports were 
true, but on that day he stood against the Indians, 
who were bent on murder, and he had considerable 
influence with them. 

It was about a week after this near massacre when 
we rode up the valley of the Canadian, accompanied 
by the celebrated scout, Jack Stillwell, who when a boy 
of sixteen had undertaken the desperate enterprise of 
crawling through the camp of armed warriors led by 
Roman Nose and getting aid for Forsythe and his little 
band of scouts and soldiers surrounded on Beecher's 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 153 

Island and threatened with annihilation. As he rode 
with us in those warm September days, Jack Stillwell 
was a fine specimen of physical manhood and about the 
most interesting traveling companion I ever knew. Al- 
most all his life had been spent among the various wild 
Indian tribes. He knew their sign language and could 
understand them and make himself understood with 
ease. There was none of the braggart or swaggering 
"bad man" in his manner or speech, but he had a rich 
fund of experience which held and interested me as 
nothing else had done since I stole away to read the 
blood-curdling tales narrated in Beedle's dime novels. 
It was a good many years afterward before I saw 
him again. By that time he had become fat and 
short of breath and looked little like the trim, hard- 
muscled, and handsome scout that he was in the fall 
of 1880. He was elected as the first police judge 
of the new town of El Reno and made a reputation as 
a fearless official who insisted that laws should be 
obeyed and order maintained. 



The Justice of the Border 

The first bank in Medicine Lodge was established 
by a man by the name of Hickman, The story was 
that he purchased a safe on time and borrowed money, 
giving the safe as security, to get his banking capital. 
Even on that narrow foundation the bank gathered 
up a good deal of business and might have succeeded 
if the proprietor had not branched out and undertaken 
to carry too great a load. As it was the Hickman 
bank failed, to the sorrow of some of the trusting 
depositors, for that was in the days before guaranteed 
deposit laws were thought of or there was any state 
supervision of banks. After the failure of the Hick- 



154 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

man bank the Medicine Valley bank was organized, with 
Wylie Payne as president, and George Geppert as 
cashier. 

Payne was also president of the great Comanche cat- 
tle pool which ranged its herds over full 1,200 square 
miles, all inclosed with barb wire fence, an appropri- 
ation of public land, of course, without any warrant 
of law. Wylie Payne was a striking character. Born 
in poverty, he had won his way to what was then con- 
sidered wealth. His brand was on 3,000 head of cattle, 
range count, worth then $100,000. A man of keen eye, 
square jaw, and indomitable energy, he was a dominant 
figure in any organization with which he was affiliated. 
He was a hard rider, hard swearer, not hot tempered, 
but a fearless fighter when the occasion seemed to re- 
quire it. He was a man who neither sought nor avoided 
quarrels, but would rather fight than yield when his 
will was opposed. There were men on the range who 
disliked him, but none who questioned his integrity 
or his courage. So it was that Wylie Payne was a 
tower of strength to the new bank, which shortly num- 
bered its patrons and depositors from the Panhandle 
of Texas to the Arkansas and from the Medicine River 
to the Colorado line. 

On a morning in early May in 1883, a half hun- 
dred cowmen waited impatiently in the livery barn 
in Medicine Lodge, their horses saddled ready for the 
"round up" which had been called that day to take 
place on Antelope Flat. A steady drizzling rain was 
falling from the clouds which hung low and heavy over 
the valley of the Medicine. The rough weather-beaten 
men were waiting for the "clearing up" and that was 
the reason why their horses were still saddled in the 
barn at nine o'clock that morning when the Medi- 
cine Valley bank opened. They were so busy watching 
the weather that they did not notice four men ride in 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 155 

from the west and dismount beside the bank. The 
leader of the four was Henry Brown, a lean, sinewy 
man, with thin, cruel lips, and cold gray eyes, to 
which mercy was a stranger. At one time he had been 
a member of the gang led by that human tiger, that 
white Apache, Billie the Kid, who before he had reached 
his majority was credited with twenty cold-blooded 
murders and who slew more from an inhuman lust for 
blood than for the gain that might come from his 
robberies. When the Kid was slain and his gang 
broken up, Henry Brown drifted eastward. 

Caldwell was then a wild cattle town, which had 
been the scene of numerous killings. The mayor and 
the city marshal had both been shot dead on the prin- 
cipal street of the town and drunken cowboys rode 
boastfully into the business houses, to the serious detri- 
ment of the furniture and interruption of business. 
The "killers" seemed to have the city fathers "buf- 
faloed" and the demand was insistent that a police 
force be organized that would give reasonable protec- 
tion to citizens. Somehow the word had come to Cald- 
well that Henry Brown was the man for the job of 
city marshal and he was hired. It is fair to say that 
he did restore order. An expert with the revolver, his 
favorite weapon was a sawed-off Winchester. Some 
men from the range undertook to shoot up the town. 
Brown killed them as coolly and with as little com- 
punction as he would have shot a stray dog. 

It was not to be supposed, however, that a man 
of the character and temperament of Henry Brown 
would be content to remain as city marshal of a 
town like Caldwell. He had heard that the Medicine 
Valley bank was bulging with money and he organized 
for a raid. With him was his assistant city marshal, 
big Ben Wheeler, a giant in stature with a weak and 
sensual face, not a leader but a fitting follower of a 



156 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

man like Henry Brown. The other two were Billie 
Smith and John Wesley from the T-5 range, on the 
Eagle Chief. Brown, Wheeler, and Wesley entered the 
bank while Billie Smith was left outside to hold the 
horses. Wheeler faced the cashier's window with drawn 
revolver, Wesley stepped in front of the little window 
at the side of the president's desk, while Brown stepped 
back into the president's room to cover the assistant 
cashier and guard the door of the bank from outside 
interference. With the command of "Hands up !" the 
cashier promptly put up his hands, but Wylie Payne 
had never put up his hands at the command of any man. 
It was instinctive with him to fight. He reached for- 
ward to get his revolver, which lay in the open drawer 
of his desk. Just then two heavy revolvers barked in 
unison. With a groan the cashier staggered back shot 
through the heart and Payne dropped from his chair 
shot through the spine. 

A revolver fired with intent to kill seems to have a 
different sound than when fired in sport. When the 
sound of shots in the bank rang out, the inhabitants 
of the little cattle town seemed to know instinctively 
that murder was being done. The little red-headed city 
marshal, who had never had his baptism of fire, ran 
up the street with gun in hand and promptly en- 
gaged in a duel with Smith, who was holding the 
horses. Unfortunately his courage was better than his 
aim, and Smith was unharmed. On the other hand, 
Smith's aim was diverted by the plunging of the horses, 
to which fact the red-headed city marshal probably 
owed his life. Wheeler, always a coward at heart, 
heard the shooting outside and panic stricken, dropped 
his gun and the sack he had brought with which to 
carry away the currency and coin, and dashed out of 
the bank. Brown and Wesley followed and all four 
mounted their horses and dashed out of town, with half 
a hundred mounted men in hot pursuit. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 157 

To the southwest of Medicine Lodge is a range of 
low lying hills. In the prehistoric past the erosion of 
waters had worn great pockets in the sides of these 
hills as if scooped out by a titanic shovel. It was 
toward these hills that Brown and his companions 
turned desperately for safety and, perhaps two miles 
from town, rode into one of these pockets in the hills. 
The rain was falling steadily, and dripping over the 
canyon's side when the robbers took refuge. The wa- 
ter was cold and rose steadily until it reached almost 
to the knees of the desperate men and their horses. 
It took the courage out of them and after a few hours 
Henry Brown appeared at the mouth of the canyon 
with a handkerchief tied on the end of his gun barrel 
as a token of surrender. The sun was sliding down 
the western sky when the four men, two of them 
shackled together with the single pair of shackles pos- 
sessed by the sheriff and the other two handcuffed 
with his only pair of handcuffs, were placed in the little 
cottonwood shanty which passed as a jail. That after- 
noon and evening knots of excited men could be seen 
talking together, not loudly, but with a quietness that 
made the conversations the more ominous. 

"We will give you $1,000 if you will save our lives 
till daylight," said Henry Brown to the county attor- 
ney who had gone to the jail to get the statements 
of the men. 

"It is my duty to protect you from mob violence if 
I can," replied the county attorney, "but it is not in 
my power to save your lives till morning. You had 
better make whatever preparations you can for death." 

And then the men facing their doom told this re- 
markable story to the county attorney. They said 
that the bank robbery was a frame-up to save the cash- 
ier, who was short $10,000; that Wylie Payne was not 
expected to be in town as he had arranged to ship some 
beef cattle on that day; that when they found him 



158 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

in the bank they concluded that they had been double 
crossed and when Payne reached for his gun Wesley 
shot him and then Wheeler had shot the cashier. That 
evening Payne died in great agony, game to the last 
and apparently only concerned because his act of going 
for his gun had caused the death of the cashier. 

When the word spread abroad that Payne was dead, 
the excitement became more intense. A man who had 
been in California in the days of the Vigilantes and 
had some experience in the tying of the hangman's 
noose, was practicing on some pliable ropes. At about 
ten o'clock the crowd moved silently through the dark- 
ness toward the wooden jail. They were met by the 
sheriff and his deputies with the question what was 
wanted. "The four men inside" was the terse reply. 
Then there was a brief fusillade participated in by the 
sheriff and his deputies and the men in the crowd, but 
the observer might have noticed that the flashes from 
the guns were upward and not horizontal. The sheriff 
and his deputies were overcome and two brawny range- 
men threw their shoulders against the jail door and 
burst it inward. 

There was a surprise for the crowd. The men had 
somehow gotten rid of the handcuffs and shackles and 
burst out into the crowd. Henry Brown, lean and 
lithe as a panther, slipped through the hands that 
grabbed at him and started to run down the hill. A 
quiet farmer standing at the corner with a sawed-off 
shotgun loaded with buckshot, emptied both barrels 
into Brown as he passed him and the leader of the four 
with a groan fell dead. Wheeler, severely wounded 
with an arm dangling by his side, ran with the fleet- 
ness inspired by deadly fear, but was captured within 
300 yards. Smith and Wesley were captured within a 
few feet of the jail door. 

Down in the bottom near the town grew an elm with 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 159 

a long strong limb branching out from the trunk per- 
haps fifteen feet from the ground, and under this the 
three were ranged. 

"Is there any statement any of you gents would like 
to make before you swing?" asked the leader of the 
mob. 

Wheeler, his great bulk shaking with mortal fear, 
his face wet with cold sweat, a coward at heart, begged 
piteously for his life: "Oh, men," he moaned, "spare- 
my life. There's other fellers mixed up in this and I 
will tell everything if you will only spare my life." 

Wesley managed to whisper that he had a mother in 
Texas and not to let her know. Smith, who had done 
none of the killing, was the only one to show nerve. 
"What's the use?" he said sullenly but firmly. "You 
intend to hang us anyway, so pull when you are ready." 

"Pull, boys," quietly directed the leader. There was 
the rasping sound of the ropes drawn across the rough 
bark of the limb. There was the spasmodic twitching 
of the limbs of the doomed men, and three bodies 
swayed slightly in the night wind. 

Perhaps there never was a more orderly lynching. 
The next morning the coroner, determined that no 
forms of the law should be overlooked, summoned a jury 
who solemnly viewed the remains and rendered a verdict 
that they had come to their death at the hands of 
persons unknown to the jury. The bodies were buried 
in the little frontier graveyard. I have been told that 
all of them were dug up and no doubt for many years 
the skeletons have been used for demonstration pur- 
poses by classes in anatomy. 

The Great Winter Kill 

The winter of 1885-86 brought ruin to the greater 
part of the men who depended on free range in west 



160 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

and southwest Kansas, eastern Colorado, the Cherokee 
strip, western Indian territory and the Panhandle of 
Texas. Up till then there had been no great winter 
kill; the price of cattle had steadily risen and the 
profits had been exceedingly satisfactory. The result 
had been to crowd more and more cattle on the range, 
so that there was an increasing shortage of winter 
pasture. In the early days of the range it was cus- 
tomary for the owner to keep his herds on a part of 
the range during the summer and early fall months 
and leave part of the range to grow up to buffalo and 
other native grasses. On a good winter range the 
buffalo grass, unpastured during the summer, would 
grow up several inches in height and bearing a generous 
crop of seed. Unless there were unusual fall rains this 
grass would cure like perfect hay, but there was always 
a bit of green near the root of the grass. It made a 
perfect balanced ration and cattle turned in on this 
winter pasture would actually fatten during the winter 
months. But as the number of cattle increased they 
encroached more and more on the winter range until 
there was practically none left and cattle were forced 
to winter on the same range over which they had grazed 
during the summer and fall. 

The weather remained fine during the fall of 1885. 
The range was crowded, but cattle men were hoping 
that there might be an open winter. During the last 
days of December or possibly the early days of Janu- 
ary there came a sudden change. A cold rain turned 
to sleet until the ground was covered with ice, and over 
this fell a sheet of snow. The weather turned bitterly 
cold. There was no available food for the poor brutes 
that wandered over the range, for in those days the 
oil cake which has since then saved the lives of hundreds 
of thousands of range cattle had not been invented. 

Generally in southwest Kansas severe cold weather 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 161 

did not last more than a few days, but that winter 
there was no respite. Days grew into weeks with the 
coat of ice and snow unmelted. At first the weaker 
cattle succumbed ; the stronger wandered restlessly and 
ceaselessly hunting for food that could not be found; 
staggering with increasing weakness, crazed with hun- 
ger, emaciated to an almost unbelievable degree, the 
poor creatures wandered on until they could endure no 
longer. The A. T. & S. F. fenced its right-of-way 
through western Kansas. The herds to the north 
drifted south before the wind until they reached this 
wire fence and there they left their carcasses, already 
so poor in flesh as hardly to tempt the coyotes although 
they, too, were on the verge of starvation. 

It is no exaggeration to say that it would have been 
possible during the early summer of 1886 to walk from 
Kingsley to the Colorado line along the right-of-way 
of the A. T. & S. F. without touching foot to the 
ground. Every step would have been taken on the dead 
carcasses of cattle. Fully eighty per cent of all the 
cattle in Barber and other southwest Kansas counties, 
the western part of what was then the Cherokee strip, 
and Indian territory and the Panhandle of Texas, died 
during that terrible winter and what were left alive 
were so enfeebled that they never recovered and might 
almost as well have died. 

In the town of Medicine Lodge was a Jew by the 
name of Simon Lebrecht, who bought hides, and during 
the summer of 1886 reaped a rich harvest. Some idea 
of the tremendous loss may be obtained when I say that 
this one Hebrew hide buyer bought forty thousand hides 
during that spring and summer. Of course there were 
other hide buyers in all the other towns and it is safe 
to say that not more than one animal out of three was 
ever skinned. 

As a sample of the losses I might mention that of 



162 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Captain Perry Ewing and Hon. Tom Potter, of Pea- 
body, who during the fall of 1885 had driven up from 
Texas a herd of some 3,300 young steers, and turned 
them on the range on Driftwood, in the neighborhood 
where the flourishing town of Alva is now located. The 
following spring they rounded up eighty enfeebled liv- 
ing skeletons. Captain Ewing had been a soldier in 
the Confederate army. After the war he gathered 
enough together to buy a small herd of cattle which 
he turned loose on the range in the Medicine valley. 
For years he had roughed it, his herd gradually in- 
creasing until it numbered several hundred head. These 
he had sold and put the entire proceeds into the Texas 
steers. The spring found him broke and compelled to 
make a new start in Arizona. 

Some fine stock breeders happened in the border 
town of Caldwell and were talking of the prices they 
had paid for certain blooded animals. One of them had 
purchased a Shorthorn for which he had paid $5,000. 
Another had paid even a higher price for a White- 
face. Sitting nearby was a rough, weatherbeaten man, 
who listened for some time and finally said : 

"Beggin' yo' pahdon, gentlemen, I must say, sah, 
that yo' are pikers, sah. Yo' talk about yo' Short- 
ho'ns and Whitefaces that cost five and six thousand 
dollahs. If yo' gentlemen will walk down heah to the 
state line a half mile, I will show you an animal that 
cost me thirty thousand dollahs." 

They were interested and declared that they would 
be glad to walk a half mile or more to see such a valu- 
able animal. Without the shadow of a smile the man 
from the range led the way down to the wire fence 
on the border. On the other side of the fence stood 
a runty, narrow-hammed Texas steer that would weigh 
in flesh perhaps 1,000 pounds, but at that time would 
hardly have tipped the scales at 500. The fine stock 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 163 

breeders looked disgusted, but the man from the range 
remarked with a weary sigh, "I paid $30,000, gentle- 
men, fo' a herd of cattle last yeah, and that is the 
herd." 

Seldom, if ever, has there been a disaster so com- 
plete and overwhelming as that which overtook the 
men of the range during that fateful winter. They 
had been dubbed cattle barons and rather prided them- 
selves on the appellation. They were generally hard 
riders and free spenders ; ready to go on each others' 
paper for any amount and generally with no security 
except the personal honor of the men they favored. 
A brief six months saw many of them reduced from 
affluence to penury, but it must also be said that as 
a rule they were good losers. Without wasting time 
in useless lamentations, they started to hunt for new 
pastures and commenced another battle with nature 
and the elements to recoup their losses and build again 
their shattered fortunes. 



The Organization of Wichita County 

One day during his second term as governor, John 
A. Martin unbosomed himself to a reporter concern- 
ing a matter which was the greatest cause of worry 
that he had to encounter during his administration. 
It so happened that a great part of the counties in 
the western third of the state were organized during 
his two terms as governor, and in nearly every one 
there was strife and bloodshed connected with the loca- 
tion of the county seat. Governor Martin, himself a 
thoroughly honest man, was astonished and grieved to 
find that men in whose integrity he had had the fullest 
confidence, when once mixed up with a county-seat con- 
test, seemed to forget about every moral principle and 



164 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

lend themselves to almost every form of lawlessness and 
crime in order to win. 

"What is the use of it all?" said the governor, sadly. 
"Finally the courts will settle the matter of which 
towns are entitled to the county seats, and all this 
violence and bloodshed will avail nothing." 

As one travels over western Kansas now, or in the 
years that have passed since the fierce county-seat wars 
ended, if he is told the story of those bloody conflicts, 
he wonders what it was all about. There is nothing 
that he can see about one of these little prairie towns 
that would excite the cupidity of men, to say nothing 
of tempting them to engage in the bloody forays that 
marked the history of the frontier. One had to live 
in those times to have some adequate understanding 
of the situation. During the middle eighties a great 
tide of immigration swept over western Kansas. With- 
in two years the population of the western third of 
Kansas increased a quarter of a million. The U. S. 
land offices were crowded almost day and night with 
applicants wishing to file on homesteads. Land office 
attorneys were swamped with business and making 
money far in excess of their fondest dreams of a year 
or two before. County-seat boomers figured that within 
a few months after becoming the seat of county gov- 
ernment their town would rival in size and business the 
best county-seat towns in eastern Kansas or in the older 
states. 

Suppose, then, that the county seat founders laid 
out the town on a section of land which at govern- 
ment price cost perhaps $800, and the cost of plotting 
it into streets, alleys, and lots. Counting eight lots 
to the acre, there would be 120 lots in the town site, 
and judging by the prices asked and received in pros- 
perous county seat towns in the East, $100 per lot 
on the average would be a conservative estimate. That 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 165 

would mean that the town site which perhaps cost the 
founders all told three or four thousand dollars, would 
sell within a few months for more than half a million. 
Was there ever a get-rich-quick scheme which equaled 
it on paper? In the days when the Belgian hare craze 
swept over the country, an expert in figures could esti- 
mate that from a single pair of rabbits their progeny 
would in ten or fifteen years mount away up into the 
millions and make the fortunate investor a multi- 
millionaire. But then there were some risks in the 
rabbit business and it would at best take several years 
to realize the fortune, but the founders of the county 
seat figured that once they had captured the prize of 
the county capital the rest was sure and easy. They 
would simply clean up at the ratio of more than a 
hundred to one within the brief space of six months or 
a year. 

Of course they could not look into the future when 
drouth and hot winds would drive out the homesteaders, 
when all their hopes would fade and the towns would 
shrivel almost to nothing. Not sensing the future they 
fought ruthlessly and unscrupulously. They blackened 
their souls with crime and stained their hands with 
blood. The county of Wichita was organized in 1886 
and almost immediately two towns became rivals for 
the county seat. Leoti was supposed to be located in 
the geographical center of the county and the rival 
town of Coronado was established three miles east of 
the center. The census enumerator was a Coronado 
man, but when his report was finally handed in to 
Governor Martin there seemed to be so much uncer- 
tainty about it that he decided to send a special com- 
missioner out to get at the real sentiment of the citizens 
for the benefit of the governor. Samuel Gerow, of 
Atchison, was selected for that unpleasant job and ap- 
parently he performed his work honestly and fearlessly, 



166 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

although at times threatened with bodily harm by the 
rival factions when one side or the other concluded 
that he was giving the other the better of the count. 

The legislature of 1887 amended the law providing 
for the organization of counties and the location of 
county seats requiring a registration of the legal 
voters prior to the election. Under this new law the 
county seat election was called for March 10, 1887. 
If the framers of the law supposed that this would 
do away with county seat troubles they were mistaken. 
It merely shifted the contest from the final election 
to the registration and the conflict raged with as much 
bitterness as before. 

In the case of Leoti and Coronado the culmination 
came on a bright, mild Sunday afternoon, February 
27, 1887, when in the main street of Coronado was en- 
acted one of the bloodiest tragedies in all the wild his- 
tory of the border. Each town supported a newspaper, 
both, of course, intensely partisan, and no doubt unfair, 
so that it is hard to get the real truth of what hap- 
pened on that fatal day. In examining the files of the 
rival newspapers I find the following account in the 
Coronado Herald of June 16, 1887: 

"During the time one Gerow was taking the wishes of 
the voters of this county in regard to the temporary county 
seat, certain parties in Leoti sent to Wallace to secure the 
services of one Charles Coulter and his six-shooter, both 
too well known in western Kansas to the sorrow of many 
good people. Coulter came and for the promise of $750 
undertook the job of making Leoti the county seat. His 
first appearance was at the polls north of Coronado with 
about 150 imported toughs to receive $4 per day. Coronado 
voters dared not go near the polls. Again on the day of 
registration he, with his companion, Rains, stood at the polls 
with guns and dictated who should register and who should 
not. Coronado men left the place of registration to avoid 
bloodshed. During the time they were at the polls the 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 167 

unarmed Coronadoites were covered with rifles in the hands 
of Coulter's friends, stationed in the town of Leoti. Later 
that day Coulter and Rains held up two Coronado men with 
guns and killed a valuable horse belonging to them. 

"Up to this time not a single Coronado man had ex- 
posed a weapon, or lost his temper. On Sunday morning, 
February 27, while the people of this town were at church, 
William Rains and A. R. Johnson came to Coronado from 
Leoti and asked a druggist here for a bottle of beer. 
They were informed that there was not any beer in town. 
Not seeing anybody on the street they remarked that "it 
would be a good time to round up the d — n town.' They 
returned to Leoti and recruited their forces with Charles 
Coulter, Frank Jenness, A. N. Boorey, Emmet Denning, 
George Watkins, and a case of beer. When they arrived at 
Coronado they proceeded to make everybody they met drink 
with them and tried to make a sick man get out of bed 
and dance at the muzzles of pistols. Later Coulter com- 
menced to knock men down with his pistol, while Frank 
Jenness would single out men to cover with his pistol. But 
such sport was too timid for drunken desperadoes, so Coul- 
ter opened the ball by shooting Charles Loomis twice, while 
Rains shot him (Loomis) in the arm. Up to this time not 
a single weapon was drawn by a Coronado man, but after 
these three shots were fired by Coulter and Rains, it seemed 
for thirty seconds from pistol reports, that every man in 
and near the crowd was shooting. When the smoke cleared 
away the old maxim was verified: 'Death loves a shining 
mark,' and in Coulter and Rains it certainly had struck 
two daisies." 

An entirely different account is that published in 
the Leoti Standard the week following the tragedy. It 
runs as follows : 

"On Sunday morning the town of Coronado was the scene 
of one of the most cowardly and dastardly crimes ever 
perpetrated in any community that had any pretense of 
being civilized, it being the shooting from the back of 
seven of our best and most respected citizens. The vie- 



168 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

tims were Charles Coulter, instantly killed; Wm. Rains, 
instantly killed; George Watkins, fatally wounded; Frank 
Jenness, shot six times; A. R. Johnson, wounded three 
times; A. N. Boorey, shot three times; Emmet Denning, 
leg broken by shot. 

"The bitter fight caused by the county seat fight, and 
the way Leoti has beaten her opponent by might of right, 
and right of might, is well known. Coronado had been 
satisfied until Sunday to carry on the fight by trickery, 
fraud, lies, and forgery, and in this way had managed to 
make the town and people despised by all who had the 
slightest insight into the matter. A note was placed in Mr. 
Coulter's hands on Sunday, inviting him over that after- 
noon and telling him to bring a friend or two with him and 
have a good time. It had been customary to visit back 
and forth, so in the afternoon the crowd of seven went 
over. They arrived there about two o'clock, and after a 
couple of hours of pleasant chatting with their friends and 
acquaintances, they all got in the buggy and started off. As 
they drove by the bank building Frank Lilly, standing in 
front of the bank, applied some foul name to Mr. Rains, at 
the same time making a motion as if to draw a gun. Rains 
sprang from the buggy and said that Lilly would have to 
fight for that. Lilly replied that he had no gun, where- 
upon Rains handed his gun to one of the party in the buggy 
and offered to fight with his fists. Lilly refused and Rains 
took his revolver and returned it to his pocket. Meantime 
Coulter, Denning, and Johnson had gotten out of the buggy. 
Charles and 'Red' Loomis, and John Knapp were standing 
near the bank at the time. As Rains put up his gun he 
remarked that he could easily whip Lilly. Lilly retaliated 
by calling him a liar, at which Rains drew his revolver 
and struck him over the head, mashing his hat, but not 
knocking him down. The men in ambush, who were await- 
ing the signal, now opened a volley of some sixty or seventy- 
five guns on the unsuspecting crowd (from Leoti). Every 
man was shot; shot from the back. The four men on the 
ground were brought down and of the three in the buggy, 
Watkins and Jenness fell out. The horses were shot and 
started to run away, with Boorey still in the buggy. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 169 

"After falling from the buggy Jenness got on his feet 
and started toward Leoti on a run. A number of shots were 
fired at him, five taking effect. The men of Coronado now 
ran out and commenced shooting at closer range, and after 
Coulter and Rains both were dead, put the muzzles of their 
guns against them and fired." 

The account goes on to say that when a party from 
Leoti went over to Coronado to get the bodies they 
found them lying in the street uncared for. Fourteen 
bullet holes were found in the body of Coulter, and 
eleven in the body of Rains. Afterwards complaints 
were sworn out against a number of Coronado citizens, 
who were arrested and taken to Garden City and Dodge 
for safe keeping. For some reason the case against 
them was never prosecuted. As one reads the ac- 
counts quoted he can understand the reason why. It is 
perfectly evident that neither account is a fair state- 
ment of the facts. That Coulter could employ 150 
toughs to carry a county seat election and pay the ex- 
penses out of a paltry $750, is of course absurd. It is 
also entirely evident that the men of Coronado were not 
the long-suffering, patient citizens pictured by the 
Herald, and neither were Coulter and Rains, and the 
others of the seven who went to Coronado on the fatal 
Sunday the estimable peaceful citizens pictured by the 
Leoti Standard. 

No doubt they went to Coronado in a spirit of brava- 
do, and no doubt on the other hand the citizens of 
Coronado expected to kill them when they came. Leoti 
won in the county scat contest, as it undoubtedly was 
entitled to do, and Coronado faded from the map. 
The Herald, after a little more than a year of troubled 
existence, suspended, and barring the fact that there 
is a whistling station on the Missouri Pacific called 
Coronado, the town is but a memory. Leoti survives, a 
town of some 400 people, peaceful and reasonably 



170 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

prosperous. Possibly the name of Leoti, too, would 
have faded from the memory of men had it not been 
that ten years after the tragedy a man from that 
town, of striking appearance and remarkable curvature 
of the lower limbs, breezed into state politics, secured 
the nomination for state treasurer, and became the 
adviser and manager of the political faction at that 
time led by J. Ralph Burton. Had Burton followed 
the advice of his faithful friend from the wind-swept 
county of Wichita, he might perhaps still be a member 
of the highest legislative body in the world. 



A Tragedy of the Frontier 

The traveler through southwestern Kansas who 
crosses the county of Stevens and notes the orderli- 
ness of its thriving little county seat and the general 
peacefulness of the dwellers on its level prairie lands, 
can hardly believe that here was enacted one of the 
bloodiest dramas of the frontier. The census report 
for 1918 gives the following brief but comprehensive 
summary of Stevens County : "Organized in 1886, area 
464,754 acres ; population, 3,331 ; assessed valuation, 
$1,162,733; miles of railroad, main track, 31.20; 
county seat, Hugoton, population 553." No doubt the 
present census will show an increase in the population 
of both the county and the county seat, for south- 
west Kansas is slowly coming into its own. 

The early history of Stevens County centers largely 
around one of the most remarkable men who ever 
figured in Kansas history — Colonel Sam Wood. Born 
near Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1825, in the county ad- 
joining that in which I first saw the light, Sam Wood 
was in his young manhood a contemporary with my 
father and a worker with him for the cause of aboli- 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 171 

tion. Of Quaker parentage, he showed few of the 
peaceful characteristics of the members of that sect 
and from his earliest manhood until he met his death 
at the hand of his assassin, he was generally engaged 
in heated controversy, often in physical encounter, and 
was seemingly fascinated by the excitement and danger 
of conflict. It is not my purpose to analyze the char- 
acter of this remarkable man. Admired by his friends 
and bitterly hated by his enemies, lauded by some as 
a statesman, humanitarian, and self-sacrificing re- 
former, denounced by others as an unprincipled charla- 
tan and unmitigated scoundrel, his panegyrists and 
critics agreed upon one point, and that was that he 
was a man of remarkable mentality and great physical 
courage. 

Possessed of ready wit and unusual faculty for sar- 
casm and repartee, in a rough and tumble debate he 
had no superiors and few if any equals. Apparently 
impervious to either insult or ridicule, he had the power 
to drive an opponent to a frenzy of exasperation while 
himself remaining cool and placid as a morning in 
June. Such a man can always command a following, 
and while he never rose to the position of a great 
leader, he made himself felt in every movement with 
which he was associated and every cause he espoused. 

The organization of very few of the western Kansas 
counties will bear the light of honest scrutiny. The 
history of their beginning is in most cases a sordid 
chapter of chicanery and graft, where men with a 
previous record for honesty and fair dealing seemed 
to throw aside every principle of probity and civic 
righteousness and assisted in the writing of a bloody 
chapter of lawlessness and dishonor. The organiza- 
tion of new counties and the establishment of county 
seats was a new industry in the eighties, which promised 
fabulous rewards for the founders. In nearly every 



172 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

case there were rival aspirants for the seat of county 
government and in order to win, the partisans of each 
were generally willing either to take part in or at 
least to wink at the commission of nearly every crime 
from petty larceny to wholesale murder. Perjury was 
excused as a necessity and ballot box stuffing was re- 
garded as an entirely justifiable and commendable ex- 
hibition of local patriotism. 

The men who were responsible for the bill forming 
the county of Stevens were the organizers of the first 
county seat, Hugoton, but it was not to have a clear 
field. Five or six miles north was located the town 
of Woodsdalc, with Colonel Sam Wood as its master 
spirit. Some miles south of Hugoton was located the 
town of Vorhees and the fertile brain of Sam Wood 
devised a scheme by which the forces of Woodsdale and 
Vorhees might be united against Hugoton. There was 
no railroad in the newly organized county, but a pro- 
posal was made to build two lines east and west through 
Vorhees, leaving Hugoton in a pocket without hope 
of a railroad, for it was also proposed to vote the 
limit of county bonds to aid the two projected lines. 
Failing to get a railroad, it was figured that Hugoton 
would certainly lose the county seat and Woodsdale 
would become the seat of government. 

It is hardly worth while to discuss the rights and 
wrongs of the bitter controversy which followed. 
Probably there wasn't much right on either side. Each 
town had a newspaper and looking back over the old 
files one is filled with a certain degree of admiration 
for the nerve of the men who edited them. No space 
was wasted in journalistic courtesies and if one were 
to believe the statements of the rival editors, both 
towns were inhabited entirely by liars, scoundrels, and 
thieves, the description of whose infamy taxed the limit 
of the editorial vocabulary. Each town imported a 
gunman of unsavory reputation to uphold the majesty 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 173 

of the law. Hugoton brought in a Kentuckian by the 
name of Sam Robinson, who had already made a record 
for himself as a six shooter artist in Pratt and Barber 
Counties and who was probably about as cold blooded 
a murderer as ever drew a gun. He was made city 
marshal of the new town of Hugoton. Woodsdale 
selected as guardian of the law one Ed Short, who, I 
believe, had achieved some reputation in and around 
Dodge City in an earlier day. 

South of Stevens County lies a strip of country at 
that time known as "No Man's Land," now Beaver 
County, Oklahoma, but then supposed to be without the 
jurisdiction of either the state of Texas or the United 
States. Here was the setting for the bloody drama 
on which the curtain was to be rung down four years 
later. 

A meeting was being held in the town of Vorhees, a 
joint debate on the proposition to vote bonds for the 
two-line railroad project. Colonel Sam Wood was to 
have been the principal speaker for the bonds, but for 
some reason could not be present. A deputy sheriff, 
James Geraud, undertook to read the Colonel's written 
speech, but was knocked senseless by a blow from the 
pistol of Sam Robinson, who from that time on dom- 
inated and broke up the meeting. A warrant was sworn 
out before a Woodsdale justice of the peace for the 
arrest of Robinson, charged with assault with intent to 
kill. Ed Short, the Woodsdale city marshal, rode to 
Hugoton to serve the warrant. He saw Robinson sit- 
ting in front of his alleged drug store and decided to 
shoot first and serve the warrant afterward. His aim 
was bad and Robinson, unharmed, got his gun and re- 
turned the fire. A posse of Hugoton men gathered at 
once and chased Short back to Woodsdale after a 
running fight, in which a good deal of ammunition was 
wasted, but no one injured. 

A few days afterward, July 25, 1888, Robinson, 



174 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Chamberlain, and Cyrus Cook and wife, of Hugoton, 
went to No Man's Land to gather plums. Ed Short 
and "Bill" Housely, of Woodsdale, started after them 
with the intent of arresting Robinson. They found 
him in a claim house, his horse, a celebrated racer, 
stabled in a half dugout nearby. Robinson succeeded 
in mounting his horse and escaped. Short sent back to 
Woodsdale for reinforcements and the sheriff of the 
county, Cross, organized a posse composed of himself, 
Theodosius Eaton, Herbert Tonny, Bob Hubbard and 
Rolla Wilcox, and started for No Man's Land. They 
passed through the town of Vorhees, where lived a 
young attorney, Jesse Dunn. They invited him to join 
them. He was willing, but had no saddle for his horse 
and it was too long a ride to take bareback. Jesse 
Dunn afterward became a member of the supreme court 
of Oklahoma instead of a victim of the Hay Meadow 
massacre. What trivial things often change the entire 
current of a man's life! 

Sheriff Cross rode on to the claim house where 
Robinson had been, found him gone, and turned to 
ride home. Three miles below the Kansas line, they 
camped for the night, with a party of men who had 
gone down there to cut and gather hay. Without ap- 
prehension of danger they lay down to sleep by the 
stacks of new mown hay, when a Hugoton posse led 
by Robinson surrounded them. They woke to face the 
guns of their captors and standing in line disarmed and 
helpless they were shot to death, all of them with one 
exception falling before the gun of Sam Robinson. 
Young Tonny managed by a quick shift of position just 
as the gun aimed at his breast was fired, to receive the 
bullet in his shoulder instead of through his vitals. He 
fell and feigned death so well that his would-be execu- 
tioners left him weltering in his blood, supposing him 
dead. Cross, Hubbard, Eaton, and Wilcox were dead. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 175 

After Robinson and his crowd had departed Tonny, 
desperately wounded as he was, managed to get on a 
horse and rode north until he reached friends and 
surgical aid. 

Nearly two years later, at the end of one of the 
most sensational trials in the history of the country, 
six Hugoton men, Cyrus E. Cook, O. J. Cook, J. B. 
Chamberlain, Cyrus Freese, J. J. Jackson and Jack 
Lawrence were convicted of the murder of Cross and 
the others. Colonel Sam Wood had been most active 
in the prosecution and on the Fourth of July, 1890, 
made the closing argument for the Government, speak- 
ing for eight hours. Sentence of death was passed on 
the six Hugoton men and the date of their execution 
set for the following December. Through the influence 
of the two Kansas senators, Ingalls and Plumb, a stay 
of execution was granted, the case was appealed to 
the supreme court of the United States, and a new trial 
granted. The case never again came to trial. Sam 
Robinson, who had done nearly all of the killing, had 
been convicted of train robbery in Colorado, where he 
had gone after the Hay Meadow massacre, and was safe 
in the Colorado penitentiary when the trial was being 
held at Paris, Texas. 

But the last act of the bloody drama had not been 
played. Judge Theodosius Botkin, Sam Wood's enemy, 
had been impeached by the lower house of the Kansas 
Legislature, but acquitted by the Senate, and returned 
to his district more bitter than ever against the man 
most responsible for his impeachment. A charge of 
bribery was filed in Botkin's court against Wood and 
on June 23, 1891, in company with his wife he drove to 
Houghton to face the charge. It was reported that a 
little boy playing in the street of the frontier town was 
\ieard to tell his companions, "They are going to kill old 
Sam Wood to-day." The court was being held in a 



176 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

church. About the time Wood and his wife approached 
court was adjourned, the judge left the church and 
stepped across the street. Colonel Wood got out of his 
buggy and started to enter the church, when a Hugoton 
man, Jim Brennan, drew his gun and shot Wood in the 
back. The colonel turned to run out of the church 
when Brennan shot him twice more, the last shot 
through the brain, and Wood fell dying at the feet 
of his wife, who, standing over the body of her hus- 
band, pointed dramatically at Judge Botkin, and in 
the language of Nathan, the prophet, to King David 
said : "Thou art the man." Brennan, with his smok- 
ing pistol in hand, refused to surrender to the sheriff 
of Stevens County, but gave himself up to the sheriff 
of Morton County. He was arraigned, charged with 
murder. The Populist attorney general of Kansas, 
J. N. Ives, went to Hugoton to assist in the prosecu- 
tion. Judge T. B. Wall, of Wichita, was selected to 
preside at the trial, but it was found impossible to 
secure a jury to try the case in Stevens County and 
Brennan was released on bail. 

Hard times came to Stevens County ; the tide of im- 
migration rolled back. Most of the homesteaders 
abandoned the country. The towns of Woodsdale and 
Vorhees faded away entirely and Hugoton at one time 
was reduced to eleven weather-beaten houses. Sam 
Robinson was in the Colorado penitentiary and Ed 
Short was killed in Oklahoma by a desperado he had 
taken prisoner. The silence of desolation ruled where 
men had striven and fought and died and gained noth- 
ing from the bloody sacrifice and ruthless struggle. 
Twenty years later a requisition was issued for the 
arrest of Jim Brennan, the slayer of Colonel Sam Wood. 
Brennan had located at the town of Getabo, Okla. 
The extradition was resisted on the ground of former 
jeopardy and Brennan went free. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 177 

In the years since then a new prosperity has come 
to the southwest. The abandoned homesteads are again 
being cultivated and Hugoton is taking on a new 
growth. In all the wide expanse of United States 
territory there is no more peaceable and law-abiding 
community than Stevens County, in which was played 
to a finish one of the bloodiest dramas in frontier 
history. 

Draw Poker on the Border 

The gambling instinct is almost universal among the 
children of men. Camouflage the game in the form of 
a church raffle and the supposed children of light will 
squander their substance with as much interest and 
zeal as the children of darkness display when they 
gather about the faro table or the roulette wheel. 
Possibly among no class of men was the gambling spirit 
more rife than among the cattlemen and cowboys of 
the range. The big cattlemen played them clear up to 
the roof, while the range riders wagered with even 
greater recklessness whatever they might happen to 
have in their pockets, and after that was gone, they 
would get whatever they could raise on their other 
earthly possessions. 

It was no uncommon thing for a cowboy to work 
faithfully for six months on the range, enduring with- 
out complaint all kinds of privations and dangers ; 
then with his six months' pay burning his pocket, he 
would hunt for the first game he could find, and be- 
fore morning would walk out dead broke, but cheerful, 
borrow enough from some friend or loan shark to 
get back to the range, and begin again the job of rid- 
ing the lines. As I have said, the passion for gambling 
was not confined to any class or condition. Two of the 
men who most earnestly loved the great American game 



178 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of draw poker were Major Andrew Drumm and Colonel 
Gus Johnson. 

Andy Drumm was a first-class business man, one of 
the most successful cattlemen operating between the 
Arkansas River and the Rio Grande. He died a few 
weeks ago at the ripe age of ninety-one, worth $2,- 
000,000. With Andy Drumm, the game was merely 
a pastime. He was counted one of the most expert 
poker players among the men of the range, but he did 
not sit in for purposes of gain, and was only a trifle 
less joyous perhaps as a loser than as a winner. 

Colonel Gus Johnson, head of the great Eagle Chief 
pool, and manager of the great herds carrying the T5 
brand, 100,000 or more, was a different type of man 
from Major Drumm, and not so good a loser. 

"Gus Johnson has the impression," said Major 
Drumm to me one day, "that he can play poker. Not 
long ago he and I were in Kansas City, and he bantered 
me for a little game of 'draw.' I was sort of hungry 
for a game myself. During that pleasant evening I 
trimmed him for $1,000. He wasn't satisfied. He is 
really one of the most difficult men to satisfy I ever 
saw. He insisted on playing the next night. When 
we parted I had separated him from a roll of $1,500. 
I remarked that it had been a pleasant evening, but 
he didn't seem to regard it that way, and indulged in 
language which made the leaves on the palms in the 
hotel parlor wither and curl at the edges. He wanted 
revenge, and I was pleased to give him the opportunity 
to get it. The next evening I trimmed him again to 
the tune of $2,500. It wasn't what I would call a warm 
night at all, but I have seldom seen a man perspire 
more freely. I wouldn't say at that, that he was sat- 
isfied, but he was convinced ; but, do you know, I think 
that man still entertains the delusion that he can play 
poker." And Major Drumm chuckled with pure de- 
light at the recollection. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 179 

Among the inveterate gamblers of the Medicine coun- 
try was one Nathan Priest, who had a few hundred cat- 
tle ranging on Elm Creek. Nate was not a skillful 
manipulator of the pasteboards, but had the reputation 
of being willing to take advantage of a crooked deal 
if he had the opportunity. The town poker players 
regarded him as an easy mark, and when he made a 
sale of beeves they rejoiced at the prospect of the 
harvest. 

As a sample of the manner in which he was plucked, 
one night his opponent dealt him a hand composed of 
three queens and two other cards. All the other players 
dropped out except Priest and the dealer. Suddenly 
the dealer complained that a bug had got in his eye. 
He appeared to be in great pain. All the other men 
except Priest gathered about him, full of sympathy 
and apparently deeply concerned in getting the bug out 
of his eye. Nobody was paying the slightest attention 
to the cards on the table except Priest, who was busily 
engaged in pawing over the discard in search of the 
other queen. It took him some time to find her, but he 
did at last. Then the hunt for the bug in the dealer's 
eye was rewarded. He expressed great relief and took 
up the hand he had laid on the table. 

Priest began to raise. The dealer saw the raise 
until they reached $600. It had been ascertained that 
this was the amount of available cash Priest had in 
the bank at that particular time, and so the dealer 
"called" him. It is hardly necessary to say that the 
dealer held four kings. It dawned on Priest too late 
what was the meaning of that bug in the eye. His 
check had already been taken to the bank and cashed 
by a confederate of the dealer. 

One more poker story comes to mind. "Circle Pete" 
was a family man and reasonably kind to his wife and 
children, and a fair provider, but possessed of an un- 
governable passion for the game of poker. On one oc- 



180 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

casion, those were the days before the telephone, Pete's 
wife sent a messenger in the person of one of the chil- 
dren to look him up. It was after midnight, and she 
wanted him to come home. The boy found his de- 
linquent parent where his mother had supposed he was 
located, and was met at the door of the room by a side 
partner of Pete's who, owing to lack of funds, had re- 
tired from the game earlier in the evening. "Tell your 
ma, son," said the side partner, "that your pa lost 
his shirt on a full hand a few minutes ago, but as soon 
as he can borrer another he will mosey home. Tell her 
not to worry none. Pete won't play no more to- 
night." 

Cimarron vs. Ingalls 

One of the last of the county-seat wars was that of 
Cimarron vs. Ingalls. The stories of the different 
county-seat wars that marked the history of the devel- 
opment of western Kansas, differed each from the 
other, but there was one point of resemblance common 
to them all. All of them were distinguished by a disre- 
gard of honor and a willingness on the part of both 
parties to the contest to violate about every civil and 
moral law in order to win. The county-seat war in 
Gray County did not differ in that respect from the 
others, but it had wider ramifications and elements of 
almost romance that distinguished it from all the rest. 

The central figure in the drama, mostly tragedy but 
which contained certain elements of comedy, was A. T. 
Soule, of Rochester, New York, reputed to be worth 
$10,000,000, accumulated from the sale of Hop Bitters 
to a credulous public. Why Soule came to Kansas is 
somewhat hard to understand. He had, if reports 
were true, more money than he could spend in the pur- 
chase of mere creature comforts. He did not need to 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 181 

build western towns or to endure the hardships, dangers, 
and vicissitudes of life on the wind-swept plains of 
western Kansas. It may be that there was the lure 
of adventure drawing him on, or it may be that he 
thought he saw in the far-flung prairie landscape where 
the sun rose and set without a tree to cast a shadow 
either in the morning or at eve, the setting for an 
empire of which he would be the builder. At any rate 
he came and as a result of his coming there was strife 
and bloodshed, the memories of which last among the 
older inhabitants even till now. 

For a man who had succeeded in building up a great 
fortune in a business venture in the East, A. T. Soule's 
projected enterprises in Kansas were singularly unsuc- 
cessful. He built a great irrigating ditch in western 
Kansas, which did not irrigate, although he did succeed 
in floating many hundreds of thousands of dollars of 
bonds, which gilded promises to pay may yet, no doubt, 
be found in the vaults of disappointed eastern pur- 
chasers. He built a college near the town of Dodge 
which I think never had any students, or if it did has 
long since been abandoned as an institution of learn- 
ing. He built a railroad seventy miles or so to the 
southwest, but abandoned it. A few years ago the A. T. 
& S. F. built a branch line over the old Soule right-of- 
way to the southwest corner of the state. It is now 
one of the most prosperous branches of that great 
system. His plan to locate the county seat and build 
a great town on the banks of the Arkansas River finally 
came to naught; the town he organized still lingers, 
but has less than a hundred inhabitants, and the county 
seat has long since gone to its rival. 

The county of Gray was organized in 1887 and the 
temporary county seat was at the town of Cimarron. 
The first county-seat election was called for October 
31. Something of the story of the contest may be 



182 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

gathered from the records of the supreme court, be- 
fore which body came the representatives of the two 
towns, one side asking for the removal of the county 
seat records from Cimarron to Ingalls and the other 
trying to prevent it, on the ground that the latter town 
had won only by the most glaring frauds and shame- 
less bribery. The story told in the supreme court re- 
port is a decided instance of the pot calling the kettle 
black. The charges made by each contestant against 
the other were not seriously disputed and they are 
worth reading, if for no other purpose, to show that, so 
far as Kansas at least is concerned, the people are not 
getting worse, even if they are not making great moral 
strides forward. Here is the story told by the Ingalls 
faction about the Cimarronians : 

Prior to the election there existed in one of the 
voting precincts known as Ford precinct, a secret or- 
ganization called the Equalization Society, composed 
of seventy-two members whose sole object, as shown by 
their constitution and by-laws, was to sell their votes 
solidly to the town which would pay the highest price, 
the money derived from the sale to be divided equally 
among the members, who were bound by oath to vote 
solidly for the town to which the sale was made. For 
violation of this oath the penalty was death. Just 
prior to the election, the record goes on to say, one 
T. H. Reeves, a leading Cimarron manager, made a 
bargain with this organization by the terms of which 
the Equalization Society was to receive $10,000 and 
in return cast the solid vote of the membership for 
Cimarron. To bind the bargain on the part of Cimar- 
ron a bond signed by fifteen of the most prominent 
citizens of Cimarron was given binding them to the 
payment of the $10,000. The seventy-two votes were 
duly cast by the members of the society, but when a 
committee went to Cimarron to get the ten thousand 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 183 

they were told to go to hell, as the town had their 
votes and the bond was a forgery anyhow, which out- 
come brings to mind old Chester Thomas' definition of 
an honest man, who, he said was one who would stay 
bought. 

The majority of the supreme court, holding no doubt 
that one side was as badly tinctured with fraud as the 
other, and as Ingalls seemed to have succeeded in get- 
ting more votes in the ballot box than Cimarron, gave 
that town the decision. However, Judge Albert Hor- 
ton, then chief justice, rendered a dissenting opinion 
in which he removed the hide of the Hop Bitters vendor 
in the following thorough and altogether workmanlike 
manner. 

"A. T. Soule, a man worth from $8,000,000 to $10,000,- 
000, and living in New York, became interested in Ingalls, 
whether for his mere pleasure or his pecuniary profit it is 
difficult to say. He attempted to make Ingalls, a new and 
very small place, the Gounty seat. He supposed that with 
his immense wealth he could locate the county seat wher- 
ever he willed. The principal contesting towns for the 
county seat up to within a few weeks before the election 
were Ingalls, Cimarron, and Montezuma. During the cam- 
paign prior to the election Soule and his agents were prodi- 
gal with their corrupt funds, with which to bribe votes 
for Ingalls. His checks for that purpose for $100, $500 
and other sums were disbursed throughout the county. He 
said, 'If any man will tell me how to buy the county seat 
I will freely pay it.' He proposed to build a railroad 
to Montezuma and got that town to withdraw as a con- 
testant for the county seat. He and his agents imported 
to the county before and on election day a crowd of toughs 
and killers." 

Finally, urged the chief justice, if the petition of 
the Ingalls crowd was granted it would encourage 
"Soule and other conscienceless scoundrels" to engage 



184 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

in other and like schemes of lawlessness and corruption. 

In most of the county-seat wars the fighting, that is 
the real killing, commenced before, at, or immediately 
after, the alleged election, but in the case of Gray 
County the bloody finale was postponed for more than 
a year. There was a growing disposition to depend 
more on courts to settle the controversies and rather 
less on guns in the hands of hired killers. So the 
tragedy was delayed while motions for rehearings were 
filed and argued. In this case, Cimarron had the ad- 
vantage of possession ; the docket of the supreme court 
was crowded with more business than the three judges 
could dispose of promptly, and Cimarron was taking 
advantage of this delay. Meantime, the IngaHs crowd 
had captured most of the county offices, among them 
the coveted office of sheriff, and the bolder spirits de- 
cided that it was time to quit fooling with their rival 
and take the law in their own hands. 

On a mild January day in 1889, a wagon, with ten 
or twelve men armed and concealed in the bottom of 
the wagon bed, drove into Cimarron and halted in 
front of the courthouse. The men got out of the 
wagon and, while part of them stood guard at the 
front, the others swarmed up the stairway and, pulling 
their guns on the county clerk, A. T. Riley, ordered 
him to throw up his hands, while they took possession 
of the county records. The news that the Ingalls crowd 
Was raiding the town spread quickly through the little 
frontier village, and the Cimarronians rallied for the 
battle. Who fired the first shot is a matter of dis- 
pute. The men of Cimarron claim that the shooting 
was commenced by the Ingalls crowd, which is entirely 
probable, as they were there for the purpose of in- 
timidating the inhabitants of Cimarron and getting 
away with the records before an effective defense could 
be organized. The conflict was short but bloody. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 185 

J. W. English, a leading citizen of Cimarron, fell dead 
at the first fire, and Ed Fairhurst and Jack Bliss, two 
other Cimarron men, were mortally wounded. Asa 
Harrington, another Cimarronian, suffered the loss of 
a thumb, while another citizen on taking off his hat 
after the fray was over, discovered that a bullet had 
passed through the crown and clipped a lock of his 
hair which was still inside the hat. The owner of the 
head covering frankly confessed that if his durned hair 
hadn't been standing up it wouldn't have been shot off 
that way. 

The Ingalls crowd, led by a brother of Bat Master- 
son, did not escape without casualties. Brooks, of 
Dodge City, was mortally wounded, and Neal Brown, 
G. W. Bolls, and C. Reicheldeffer were severely wounded. 
Meantime the county records were piled into the wagon 
and gotten out of town by the Ingalls partisans, but 
three or four of the attacking party were captured by 
the Cimarron men. It is a somewhat remarkable fact 
that they were not killed by the enraged men of Cimar- 
ron when they had them in their power, instead of be- 
ing surrendered to the sheriff who was an Ingalls 
partisan, and who immediately turned them loose. A 
company of militia under the command of General 
Murray Myers, of Wichita, was hurried to the scene. 
Order was restored and the last of the really bloody 
county-seat wars of western Kansas was ended. 

It was the news of the county-seat contest in Gray 
that called forth the following literary output in the 
New York Tribune: 

"The news that another county-seat war has broken out 
in Kansas has found its way to New York by telegraph. 
Kansas is again in the saddle. Once more a four-mule 
team is attached to one of the court houses and it is going 
across the prairie on a fast trot. 

"The existence of the western Kansas court house is 



186 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

at best transitory and uncertain. The golden morning sun- 
light floods it in Pottawatomie City, but its lengthening 
evening shadow falls across the streets of Little Paradise 
Valley. One day the stray swine of Occidental City seek 
its hospitable shade, the next some predatory calf in Big 
Stranger bunts open the back door and eats a deed and two 
mortgages while the register is taking a nap. To-day we 
mark it in Grand Junction with a new front door painted 
yellow, and the gable end blown off by the last tornado, but 
to-night a band of determined men will come from Rattle 
Snake Crossing and haul it away with a yoke of oxen, with 
the mayor and city council of Rattle Snake pushing on the 
end of the court house. The Kansas court house is the 
'Wandering Jew' among public institutions." 

The people of western Kansas long ago learned that 
the mere fact that it was the county seat did not build 
a town and that the advantages derived did not com- 
pensate for the lives lost and the honor sacrificed in 
the desperate struggle for a prize much coveted but, as 
subsequent events proved, often of little value. For 
many years one of the county-seat towns of south- 
western Kansas could boast only of fifteen inhabitants ; 
two others did not have more than seventy-five in- 
habitants each, and the best block of lots in the town 
would not have sold for enough to have paid the funeral 
expenses of the men whose lives were sacrificed in the 
early-day conflict. 

A Steer Was the Ante 

I do not wish to create the impression that the late 
Major Andy Drumm was entirely addicted to the game 
of draw poker, for, as a matter of fact, he was a very 
competent and keen business man, possibly the best 
judge of cattle among the men of the range; a man 
who rarely made a mistake in his judgment of men and 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 187 

who was a close observer of markets and industrial 
conditions. This was the reason why when he died his 
estate totaled $2,000,000 in first class securities, cattle, 
and real estate. Neither was he a mere money maker. 
The ambition of his life was the creation of a home 
where friendless boys would have a chance to get an 
education, be taught habits of industry and thrift, and 
turned out into the world well equipped and useful 
citizens. 

His love of the game of poker was a mere pastime. 
He liked the excitement and adventure of it and it 
may be said in passing that the size or character of 
the stakes never daunted him. 

After the Major had established his commission 
house at Kansas City, in the early eighties, there came 
one day a Texan who also loved the game rather better 
than he did choice food, and when the business of the 
day was closed he suggested to Major Drumm that he 
would like to "sit in" but that he was somewhat ham- 
pered in the way of cash. 

"That need not stand in the way of a pleasant eve- 
ning," remarked the Major, "you have plenty of cattle. 
Suppose we make the ante a steer and two steers to 
come in. 

The novelty of the proposition appealed to the 
Texan and the game started. Major Drumm dealt 
the cards ; the man from Texas theoretically put a 
steer on the table as his ante. Drumm came in with 
two steers, having been dealt a pair of tens and had 
the luck to fill on the draw, while the Texan caught a 
bob-tailed snag and passed out. 

On the third round it was proposed to make it a 
jack pot. Three deals were made before either could 
open the pot, when the Texan drew a pair of jacks and 
opened with a fine breeding bull, which counted the 
same as six steers. Major Drumm promptly covered 



188 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

this with five steers and a two-year-old heifer and then 
went the Texan twelve cows better. 

The Texan drew more cards, "saw" the twelve cows 
and raised the Major fifty steers, twenty two-year-old 
heifers, four bulls and twenty-five yearling heifers. 
Drumm carefully scanned his hand and then placed on 
the table, six fine blooded Alderney cows, five imported 
Durham bulls, 100-gr ass-fed two-year-old steers, fifty 
prime to medium Colorado half-breed steers, with a 
side bet of a Normandy gelding to cover the bar bill. 

The Texan "called" with an even 250 straight 
Kansas wintered Texas half-breed steers, ten Scotch 
polled cattle, fourteen Texas mustang ponies and the 
deed to a tract of land in the Panhandle of Texas. 

When the cards were laid upon the table Major 
Drumm had three aces and the Texas gentleman had 
three jacks. As the result of the game, Drumm 
theoretically placed in his hip pocket 750 steers, a large 
number of blooded bulls, a considerable herd of one and 
two-year-old heifers and cows of high and low degree, 
ten mustangs and a ranch in the Panhandle of Texas. 

While cattle were low in price at that time as com- 
pared with present prices, it is probable the money 
value of the stakes in that remarkable game was not 
less than $40,000. It was not a piker game. This 
game was not only unique in the matter of the stakes 
played for, but it illustrated the character of the men 
who engaged in the cattle business at that time. 
Probably no men were freer spenders or, according to 
the standard of time, better sports. The losing of 
$40,000 or $50,000 worth of cattle, horses and other 
livestock, with a ranch thrown in, all in an evening 
session at poker, did not dampen the spirits of the 
Texas rancher, and neither would it have brought any 
sadness to Major Drumm if he had been the loser. 
But it was some game. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 189 

WJien Hell Was in Session at Caldwell 

In the issue of December 17, 1881, of the Wichita 
Beacon, then a weekly paper, is found this brief but 
comprehensive editorial statement : 

"As we go to press hell is again in session at Caldwell." 

Just then Caldwell was the wildest town on the 
Kansas border. It had had something of a reputation 
for several years but at that time other wild and 
woolly towns were showing indications of tameness and 
comparative austerity, and as one star differeth from 
another star in glory, so border towns differed from 
each other in their wildness and "wooliness," and just 
then Caldwell led all the rest. 

The prohibitory amendment to the Kansas constitu- 
tion had been adopted the year before and the first 
prohibitory law was in operation. But a few towns 
saw fit to ignore the law and among them was Cald- 
well. Its business men labored under the delusion that 
saloons and dance houses were necessary to the pros- 
perity of the town and as a result they ran wide open, 
with the full consent and approval of the city author- 
ities. The few inhabitants of the town, who did not 
favor this open violation of the law, were regarded as 
troublesome and unreasonable cranks if they voiced 
their sentiments, which few of them did. Even the 
preachers, for the most part, found something else to 
preach about and made little, if any, mention of the 
lawlessness and iniquity immediately at hand. 

At the time this somewhat startling statement ap- 
peared in the Wichita Beacon, the mayor of Caldwell 
was a big, blue-eyed, handsome Irishman by the name 
of Mike Meagher. Mike had been the city marshal of 
Wichita in the days when that town was the terminus 
of the Texas cattle drive, and during the course of his 



190 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

administration had killed a desperado by the name of 
Powell. Unfortunately for Meagher, Powell had a 
cousin, a Missourian, who probably had been a bush- 
whacker during the Civil War, and to whom murder 
was a pastime. Jim Talbott was a typical "bad man." 
To him human life meant nothing. Mercy would have 
been regarded by him as a display of effeminate weak- 
ness, and to "get even" with one who had incurred his 
enmity was the height of his ambition. 

When word came that his cousin, Powell, had been 
killed, Jim Talbott is said to have registered a vow 
that he would "get" the man who killed him. It was 
a year or two after the killing, as the story goes, 
when "Billie the Kid" was making his spectacular and 
bloody record in New Mexico, that he one day met Mike 
Meagher. They were taking a drink together when 
"Billie the Kid," leaning on the bar, looked at Mike 
Meagher with an evil, mirthless smile and said: "I 
understand that Jim Talbott says he intends to kill 
you on sight." Possibly Mike did not at the time 
take the warning very seriously, for like most of the 
men who were city marshals and sheriffs in those 
troublous times, he was inclined to be a fatalist, who 
had the impression that, somehow or other, he bore a 
charmed life. 

He had moved from Wichita to Caldwell when the 
"Windy Wonder" ceased to be a cattle town, and be- 
cause he was the type of man he was, was elected mayor 
of the town. A few months before his death, I met 
Meagher. He seemed at that time as carefree as a 
boy ; a big, good-natured Irishman, who had not 
thought of a rendezvous with death. 

It had been nearly six years since the gunman Powell 
had died as he tried to "draw" on the street in Wichita, 
but Jim Talbott, the bushwhacker, had not forgotten. 
I might say here that while he was known on the border 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES i91 

as Talbott, his real name was Sherman. Why he saw 
fit to change it I do not know. He had gathered his 
gang and notified each of them of his purpose, which 
was to kill Mike Meagher. All of them were desperate 
gunmen. Tom Love, Billy Mankin, alias Comanche Bill ; 
Bob Munson, Dick Eddleman, Jim Martin, Doug Hill, 
Bob Bigtree, and Tom Delaney. On a black December 
day they met in Caldwell and laid their plans. They 
were to start trouble in one of the dance halls. They 
knew that Meagher would take a hand in quieting the 
disturbance, and in the course of the fight they intended 
to kill him. The night before the killing there was an 
Uncle Tom's Cabin show in town, which Talbott and 
his gang attended in force. They interrupted the per- 
formance with oaths and obscenity until finally the 
editor of the Caldwell Post, Tell Walton, protested and 
asked Talbott to refrain from his foul remarks. For 
this, Talbott cursed the editor, and told him that he 
would get him next day. All the plans evidently were 
not completed yet, and the editor's life was spared. 

The next night trouble started in earnest. Talbott 
and his gang were starting out to "shoot up the town." 
George Speer, proprietor of the "Red Light" saloon 
and dance hall, perhaps as tough a place as ever 
flourished on the border, had joined the gang, for he, 
too, had his grievance against Mike Meagher. Speer's 
brother had murdered a man in cold blood a few 
months before and Meagher had insisted that the mur- 
derer should be arrested. It seemed to George like an 
unseemly thing to make so much fuss about so trifling 
a thing as murder. The city marshal seemed to have 
a hunch and was not on the street when the shooting 
commenced, but at daybreak Meagher hunted him up 
and told him to arrest the men who were shooting in 
the street. The marshal found a part of the gang 
armed with Winchester rifles and revolvers and Tal- 



192 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

bott with a needle gun. He disarmed one of the men, 
Tom Love, and started with him for the city jail when 
the other conspirators interfered and rescued the ar- 
rested man. The marshal called on the mayor for as- 
sistance, which was what the gang wanted. They 
could easily have killed the marshal, but he was not the 
one they were after. They knew that Mike Meagher 
would come to the rescue. The city marshal soon 
sensed the plot and begged Meagher to seek safety, 
but to a man of Meagher's temper and reputation to 
run from danger would be worse than death and Tal- 
bott knew it. So the great street fight commenced. 
The gang and Meagher, and a few daring enough to 
come to his aid, sought protection behind buildings 
which, in the course of the battle, were riddled with 
balls. Talbott, his mind concentrated on just one 
object, the death of Meagher, slipped round a building 
for a flank attack. Meagher, generally wary, was 
caught off his guard and as he stepped from behind a 
building Talbott shot him through the breast and 
Meagher fell mortally wounded. 

Meantime the big sheriff, Joe Thralls, had been 
notified and with a posse of twenty men was on his 
way to the border ; but Talbott's vengeance had been 
satisfied. The man he had sworn to kill was dead by 
his hand and, gathering his gang, he started to get out 
of town before the sheriff arrived. It was a bit of 
retributive justice that the dance hall proprietor who 
opened the shooting in the streets, was shot through 
the heart as he started to mount his horse and ride 
out of town with the rest of the gang. The others 
impressed horses from a livery stable, but one horse 
was disabled as the gang started to flee and, with two 
of their number mounted double, the murderers fled to 
the southward. A few miles south of the border they 
came across a couple of freighters' camps and after 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 193 

helping themselves to such provisions as they could 
carry and part of the horses, they rode on to the 
ranch of W. E. Campbell, where they helped them- 
selves to fresh horses. Campbell, who was a man of 
hasty temper, was irritated by the theft of his horses 
and joined enthusiastically in the pursuit which was be- 
ing conducted by the frontier sheriff. A few miles 
further south the murderers took refuge in a rocky 
canyon and there for several hours kept up a fight 
against the sheriff and his posse, one of whom Camp- 
bell, the rancher, was severely wounded. It was known 
afterward that some of the Talbott gang were wounded 
but managed to escape and somewhere in the fastnesses 
of the mountains far to the southwest, they finally 
eluded their captors entirely. 

It was more than twenty years afterward that Jim 
Talbott was finally apprehended and brought back to 
Kansas for trial for the murder of Mike Meagher. But 
the witnesses were scattered or dead. Perhaps, too, 
there was a feeling that as Caldwell had seen fit to 
defy the law and protect lawbreakers it might be just 
as well to let bygones be bygones. Whatever the reason 
may have been, Talbott was never convicted and Mike 
Meagher lies in his grave unavenged. The days of 
the saloon and dance hall in Caldwell have long since 
passed and for years there has been no more orderly 
community in the great state of Kansas, and men 
wonder now that there ever was a time when they 
thought that saloons and dance halls were aids to 
prosperity. 

Campaigning on the Frontier 

Among the early representatives from Kansas was 
Judge R. William Brown, who at one time repre- 
sented in Congress about twd-thirds of the entire 



194 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

area of Kansas. He was also the first judge to hold 
court in the frontier county of Barber. Judge Brown 
was a graduate of an eastern college, well educated and 
well read in the law, but he never succeeded in adapt- 
ing himself to the environment of the frontier. It was 
that perhaps which restricted his service in Congress 
to a single term. He was short-sighted and had to 
wear glasses, which on the frontier was a handicap. 
For some reason the average frontiersman looked on 
a man who wore glasses as affected, perhaps effeminate 
or inclined to be a dude. In addition to wearing glasses 
the judge was a preternaturally solemn man. If Judge 
Brown ever smiled I never happened to be present when 
he gave indication of mirth, and my acquaintance ex- 
tended over several years. Another thing which marked 
the judge was his luxuriant crop of whiskers which in 
times of calm covered his breast as with an auburn 
mantle and at other times were tossed by the playful 
Kansas winds. 

During the later eighties the Republican state cen- 
tral committee gave me my first assignments as a cam- 
paign speaker. I was billed to fill a number of ap- 
pointments on the kerosene circuit in company with 
Judge Brown. I collected a number of more or less 
mouldy chestnuts with which to enliven the otherwise 
barren wastes of my speech. Judge Brown, ex-judge 
and ex-congressman, was supposed to do the heavy work 
of the campaign. I as a young man was going along 
as a sort of filler. In deference to his greater age and 
experience and accumulated political honors, he was 
to make the last speech, while I made the opener. 

As I told the stories I had collected and committed 
to memory, the judge sat in front of me regarding 
me with profound gravity and, I thought at times, 
with tolerant sadness. When I got through he would 
come forward after the introduction by the chairman 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 195 

and discuss the tariff at length, without a story, or 
glint of humor. It was really an able presentation of 
the tariff question, but unfortunately most of the audi- 
ence didn't care a whoop about the tariff and perhaps 
failed to appreciate the judge's masterly effort. 

After we had filled perhaps a half dozen appoint- 
ments I was somewhat surprised when the judge pro- 
posed to reverse the order of the speaking, indicating 
that he didn't consider it quite fair that I should al- 
ways have to take the opening when the audience maybe 
was just gathering and hardly settled in their seats. 
I told the judge that I appreciated his generosity, but 
really thought he ought to close the meeting, but if he 
insisted I would do the best I could. At the next 
meeting place the judge informed the chairman that 
he would open with a short speech and I would close. 

To my astonishment he started in on my stories and 
repeated one after another until he had exhausted my 
supply. He told them as his own and with a funereal 
sadness that I have never seen equaled. As he told 
them they seemed to be profoundly pathetic and al- 
most moved the audience to tears. They did not fit 
anything in his speech but it was a knockout for me. 
I simply couldn't readjust myself to the situation. 
When he got through I excused myself, saying that 
I wasn't feeling well and at any rate after the masterly 
and exhaustive speech of Judge Brown I felt there was 
little to add. So far as I was concerned, the statement 
that the address was exhaustive was no figure of speech. 
I felt decidely exhausted. I don't know how it was with 
the audience. The judge made no apology or explana- 
tion and I asked for none. 

At the next stop, however, the judge was to fill the 
date alone and I was ordered to go on to another little 
frontier town. The railroad station was a full half 
mile from the town at which Judge Brown was to 



196 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

speak and the local committee had evidently decided 
that there ought to be some sort of reception. One 
Republican in the town was found who could blow a 
fife and another had in some way become possessed of 
a large bass drum. These two constituted the recep- 
tion committee. When the judge alighted from the 
train the reception committee formed a procession: 
the man with the fife in front, the judge in the center, 
and the man with the bass drum bringing up the 
rear. 

The fifer struck up in shrill and piercing measure 
the air of "Yankee Doodle" and the man with the 
bass drum, in the rear, beat furiously on his instru- 
ment. I never saw a man expend more energy on a 
drum in my life, and there came to me the story of 
Artemus Ward, who said that he once knew a man who 
hadn't a tooth in his head and yet he could play the 
bass drum as well as any man he ever saw. As the 
train moved off across the prairie, I watched the novel 
procession moving toward the town — the fifer throw- 
ing his whole soul as it were into the old but inspiring 
air, the bass drummer beating furiously on the re- 
sounding drum, and Judge Brown walking gravely be- 
tween the two, his whiskers tossed by the Kansas wind, 
calling to mind the lines of Whittier telling of the 
flag incident of old Barbara Frietchie: 

"All day long it rose and fell 
On the loyal winds that loved it well." 

And so the judge's whiskers rose and fell on the 
Kansas winds that loved them well. 

From there on our ways parted in that campaign. 
I do not know whether the judge inflicted those stories 
of mine on any more audiences or not, but I always 
cherished a feeling that he put one over on me. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 197 

The Tribulations of Early-Day Editors 

I have had occasion heretofore to mention an early- 
day Kansas editorial writer who was gifted with bril- 
liant talents but who wasted them with reckless 
prodigality. It has been a good many years since I 
have heard of Jim Chatham. I do not even know 
whether he is alive or dead. He was instinctively a 
bohemian, unstable and dissipated, but with so many 
likable traits of character that his acquaintances were 
disposed to forgive his shortcomings, which were many 
and inexcusable. If he had been stable and industrious 
he might have ranked as one of the foremost wits of 
the editorial profession. If he had devoted himself to 
short story writing I think he might possibly have 
rivaled O. Henry. 

In the late seventies and early eighties he was editor 
of the Short Creek, afterward Galena Daily Repub- 
lican. In one of the issues of November, 1880, under 
the title "Terrible Female Craze for Editorial Gore,'* 
he says : 

"What this community needs just now is a society for 
the prevention of cruelty to men, especially writin' men, 
otherwise editors. There is entirely too much blood on the 
moon and the air is getting too fragrant of the smoke of 
battle. There are too many bloodthirsty women on the war- 
path and unless some steps are taken pretty soon to secure 
a cessation of hostilities, there is liable to be a number of 
vacant editorial chairs. 

"For three days a woman in a violent rage has been 
promenading the streets of this town, looking for the man 
who writes up articles for the Republican. We are con- 
fident she is armed or she would not be so bloodthirsty, but 
whether she carries a pistol or a cowhide we have not been 
able to ascertain. She doesn't know him when she sees 
him and, thanks to a generous public, no one will point him 
out. She boils over at every street corner and the object 



198 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of her search hasn't eaten a hearty meal for three days, 
and besides his hair is rapidly turning gray. One woman 
has brought suit against the paper for libel and wants three 
thousand dollars to patch up her wounded reputation. 
We don't care for that, however. She has only to call 
and the money will be paid without a grumble, but the 
cowhide and that pistol or perhaps a loaded cane, is what 
is causing a good deal of uneasiness. We want to resign in 
favor of a solid, cast-iron man with a Bogardus kicker 
attached to each heel. 

"It was only yesterday afternoon that a stout, ruddy- 
faced lady suddenly entered the sanctum and inquired 
for the editor. That individual made no reply, but dis- 
appeared through the scuttle hole into the garret as sud- 
denly as though taken up by a cyclone. In his hasty en- 
deavor to reach the farthest corner of the garret, he fell 
through the plastering and hung down into the police court 
room, suspended between the ceiling and the floor by the 
well worn and unsafe seat of his unmentionables. When 
he was relieved from that ludicrous predicament the ma- 
tronly woman, who proved to be a lady friend from the 
country, came forward and said her 'old man' had sent us 
a few apples to eat during the long winter evenings. 

"The man who does the collecting has had both his eyes 
blacked by irate females, simply because he is an attache 
of the Republican and the carrier boys all carry welts 
across their spinal columns as large as a ship's hawser. 

"One typo hasn't been out of the office for three days 
and he begins to think it is about time to break his fast. 
The other one, who is more intrepid, has had two ribs 
broken and his nose rests on the side of his face like a 
maiden's head on a Sunday shirt front after evening 
services. 

"The young man who wheels offal from a Main Street 
butcher shop was mistaken for the editor of the Miner, yes- 
terday morning, by an enraged female, who hit him in the 
eye with a rotten potato. 

"A four-tined clerk in an Empire City livery stable was 
yesterday morning chased three blocks and kicked every 
jump, by a frenzied female who mistook him for the editor 
of the Joplin News. 



EVENTS IN THE EIGHTIES 199 

"The 'old man' of the west end of the Herald has been 
hiding out in the brush for three days. His nose has been 
battered into the shape of a Texas cow horn, and the finger- 
nail marks on his body, where his shirt front used to rest, 
give that part of his person the appearance of a map of 
the Short Creek mining district. He wears more beef steak 
on his left eye than he has eaten for six months. He says 
that he has had enough of this blarsted country and intends 
returning to England, where women are amenable to the 
law. 

"The local editor of the Herald has been in bed nearly 
a week and his head is as hairless as the other side of a 
tomb stone. How the proprietor of the Miner has suf- 
fered we are not prepared to say, but from the tone of the 
following, which appears in yesterday's Herald, we judge 
that he is out of town: 

" 'Yesterday a well dressed and respectable looking 
woman stepped into Halyard's hardware store and pur- 
chased half a dozen cartridges, with which she quietly 
proceeded to fill the chambers of her revolver. When asked 
why she carried the weapon, she replied that it would soon 
be made public if a certain party came in on the Gulf 
train.' 

"We have telegraphed every station agent along the Gulf 
road to advise him to go on to China. 

"We no longer have a free press. It has been muz- 
zled, and that, too, by women, who seem determined not 
only to rule, but to ruin also." 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 

Jerry Simpson 

Among the unique and remarkable characters 
brought to public notice and notoriety by the 
political upheaval of thirty years ago, no one 
attained to greater fame or secured wider celebrity than 
"Sockless" Jerry Simpson, of "Maidson Lodge," as 
the facetious newspaper reporters dubbed him. Jerry 
was born in the province of New Brunswick in 1842, of 
Scotch ancestry. His father migrated to the United 
States when Jerry was a very little boy and settled in 
the state of Michigan. Although of an alert mind 
and possessed of a real hunger for knowledge, Jerry's 
educational opportunities were exceedingly limited. He 
was illiterate so far as the branches taught in the 
schools were concerned, but a voracious reader and, 
endowed with a remarkable memory, he managed to 
store his mind with more than an ordinary equipment 
of really good literature, so that he was entitled to be 
called a well-read man. At the outbreak of the Civil 
War he enlisted, but served only a few months until 
discharged for disability. After the close of the war 
he became a sailor on the great lakes, and gradually 
rose to the position of captain on a lake freighter, a 
position which requires a large degree of resourceful- 
ness and courage. During a fearful storm his ship 
was driven ashore near Ludington and it was largely 
owing to the masterful courage and coolness of Jerry 
Simpson that the lives of all the crew were saved. 

200 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 201 

During the seventies he decided to come to Kansas 
and settled in Jackson County, where he engaged in 
farming and stock raising with some success, but con- 
cluded that there were better opportunities in the free- 
range country and came to Barber County along in 
'83 or '84. It was an unfortunate time to get into 
the cattle business. He had hardly got fairly started 
when the terrible winter of '85-86 came on and nearly 
wiped his herd off the face of the earth. His cows 
died faster than he could skin them and spring found 
him nearly broke. He had come to the county with 
some $10,000. 

In 1886 the Union Labor party was organized and 
the old-time Greenbackers, of whom Jerry was one, 
promptly joined it. Jerry had already demonstrated 
some ability as speaker in country lyceums and the 
like, and his party in Barber County selected him as 
its candidate for the Legislature. I happened to have 
the honor of running against him and while I defeated 
him it was not a victory to blow about. 

Two years later he was again a candidate and as 
that happened to be the year when Kansas rolled up 
a Republican majority of 82,000, Jerry was buried 
under the general landslide. There were those who pre- 
dicted that he would never come back again, but they 
had no vision of the future. Eighteen eighty-nine was 
the greatest corn year of all Kansas history, but the 
price went down until corn sold at ten cents per bushel 
or less and was burned for fuel all over Kansas. A 
few years before the people of the state had plunged 
into debt with a recklessness seldom if ever equaled and 
now pay day had come and ten-cent corn and forty- 
cent wheat to pay with. It is not very remarkable 
that the people saw red, and talked of the altar of 
Mammon, the great red dragon, and the "crime of 73." 
The words of the agitator fell on fertile ground. The 



202 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Farmers' Alliance spread like a fire on the dry prairie 
driven by the high wind. Too late the Republican 
leaders became alarmed and decided that the way to 
retain power was to get up a platform about as radical 
as anything suggested by the Alliance and then release 
the candidate from all party allegiance and authorize 
him to pay no attention to the party caucus. The con- 
cessions only caused derision and jeers on the part of 
the Alliance men and it was in this frame of mind 
that Alliance delegates met in the spring of 1890 to 
nominate a candidate for Congress. Jerry Simpson 
went to the convention as a delegate, but his name had 
not been mentioned as a probable candidate. S. M. 
Scott, of McPherson, the author of a pamphlet on 
the sub-treasury, was the man to be nominated, but 
Scott could not get it into his mind that it was possible 
to overcome the majority of 14,000 rolled up by the 
Republicans only two years before and pushed the 
proffered honor aside. Jerry Simpson had been called 
on to make a speech and caught the crowd. With 
Scott out of it, the delegates turned to the ex-sailor 
and nominated him. They builded better than they 
knew. Under the conditions then prevailing Jerry 
Simpson was an ideal candidate. He was a good talker, 
possessed of a ready wit, and with an instinctive and 
correct appraisement of the value of publicity. A 
correspondent of the Wichita Eagle accused him of 
wearing no socks. Jerry did not attempt to deny the 
charge and charged in turn that his opponent, Colonel 
J. R. Hallowell, wore silk hose. He wove this skillfully 
into his speeches and roused unbounded enthusiasm by 
the turn. He confessed his poverty and his audience, 
carried away with the zeal of crusaders, threw the few 
dollars they had in their pockets on to the platform to 
help pay the campaign expenses of their candidate. 
Jerry was a good storyteller. His stories were not 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 203 

new, but an old story well told is often as effective as a 
brand new one. He covered the Republican platform, 
adopted at Dodge City, with ridicule and amid howls of 
delight told the following story: A Jew and an Irish- 
man were crossing a stream in a boat when it occurred 
to the Irishman that he would convert the Jew. He 
demanded that the descendant of Abraham renounce 
his faith and acknowledge the divinity of Christ and 
the Virgin Mary. The Jew refused, whereupon the 
Irishman threw him out into the water. He came up 
choking and sputtering and tried to climb back into 
the boat, but the Irishman refused to let him in unless 
he would confess and give up his "dombed hathenism." 
The Jew still refusing, the Irishman shoved him under 
again and held him there until he was almost drowned. 
At last he let him come to the surface gasping and 
almost speechless. When he was able to talk, seeing 
no evidence of mercy on the part of the Hibernian he 
said that he would renounce and confess. "Oim glad 
to hear that," said the Irishman, "but Oim av the 
opinion that if iver yez git to land ye dombed sheeney, 
yez will take it back so Oim goin' to drown yez now 
and save yure immortal soul." The application was 
that the Republican party should be killed while it was 
in a repentant frame of mind. 

The result of the election was a surprise even to the 
most sanguine of Jerry's supporters. A Republican 
majority of 14,000 was succeeded by a Populist major- 
ity of more than 8,000 and Jerry Simpson suddenly 
found himself one of the most talked of men in the 
United States. To his credit let it be said that he did 
not lose his head. In Congress he rapidly acquired 
polish and was recognized as the leader of his party. 
His political views broadened; his crudities of speech 
were mostly abandoned. He held his own in the rough 
and tumble debates in the lower house and gained favor 



204 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

with the then speaker of the house, Tom Reed, of 
Maine. In 1892 he was re-elected, but the Populist 
party had already passed the crest and was on the 
decline. His majority of more than 8,000 was reduced 
to less than 2,000 and two years later was wiped out 
entirely, when Chester I. Long defeated him by a com- 
fortable majority. In 1896 the free silver issue swept 
over Kansas and Jerry was elected for the third time, 
but with the subsidence of that he was defeated and 
retired from public life. It may be said for him that 
while he was an original Greenbacker he never was at 
heart in favor of free and unlimited coinage of silver 
at the ratio of sixteen to one. Naturally possessed of 
a keen and logical mind he saw the fallacy of the ar- 
gument in favor of a fixed ratio between the two metals, 
but believed in the Greenback theory that there should 
be no intrinsic value in money. 

Jerry was naturally a radical both in politics and 
religion. Before he became especially interested in 
politics he was known to his acquaintances as a "free 
thinker" or infidel. He had accumulated a number of 
books defending his views, such as Thomas Paine's 
"Age of Reason," Huxley, and Ingersoll. He loaned 
them to a family by the name of Jesse to read, but 
shortly afterward most of the Jesses were converted 
by an evangelist and decided that the first thing they 
ought to do was to make a bonfire of Jerry Simpson's 
books, which they did. Robert Jesse became imbued 
with the belief that the Almighty had made him immune 
to hurt from guns and to prove his faith offered any 
man $100 who would take a shot at him. His neighbors 
refused to take him at his word and had him incar- 
cerated in the hospital for the insane. In his lake 
experience Jerry Simpson had learned to be a very fair 
rough and tumble fighter, although never inclined to 
quarrel. A burly blacksmith by the name of Corson 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 205 

becam^ offended at a remark made by Jerry and an- 
nounced that he intended to whip him and give him a 
plenty while he was at it. He attacked Jerry without 
warning, but got the surprise of his life. In less than 
a minute it was Corson who was whipped, while Jerry 
had not suffered so much as a scratch. Afterward 
Corson became one of Jerry's greatest admirers and 
staunchest political supporters. 

It has been a good many years now since Jerry Simp- 
son's body was laid to rest. As the years speed on 
there is a growing kindliness that honors his memory. 
He was a man of more than ordinary native ability; 
a character such as could be produced only in a coun- 
try of free speech and the open door of opportunity. 



Dynamite Dave 

A great many people in Kansas and Oklahoma, and 
for that matter a great many people outside of these 
two states, have read the remarkable stories which 
originated in the brain of Dave Leahy. It has been a 
good many years now since the sympathy of thousands 
of people was wrought up by the story of a fair-haired 
child who was so unfortunate as to fall into a bored 
well out in western Kansas. The mother of the child 
missed it and began a frantic search, when her atten- 
tion was attracted to a plaintive cry coming from out 
of the ground. Then she discovered that her child 
had fallen down into this bored well. Its body fitted 
the hole pretty close, which prevented it from slipping 
down to the bottom. The story went on to state that 
the neighbors were called in and then began the des- 
perate effort to rescue the child. The men worked by 
relays day and night, digging down about the pipe. 
Eastern papers got hold of the story and wired for 



206 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

particulars. Dave Leahy discovered that he had 
opened a literary mine, so to speak. It was a valuable 
space filler and he continued the story. As the frantic 
rescuers got near the unfortunate little one he per- 
mitted it to slip down a few feet, so prolonging the 
agony and incidentally gathering more financial re- 
ward. The child was, according to Dave, finally res- 
cued, little the worse for its thrilling experience. 

When John L. Waller was consul to Madagascar he 
got in bad with the French Government on account of 
certain timber concessions. He was arrested and 
brought to France, where he was for a considerable 
time imprisoned. This suggested to Dave Leahy the 
story of some Frenchman, whom he reported captured 
by Oklahoma negroes in revenge for the treatment ac- 
corded John L. Waller, a man of their race, by the 
French Government. The story was that this French- 
man was held in a cave in eastern Oklahoma. The 
story crossed the ocean and came to the notice of the 
French Government, which through its department of 
state took the matter up with our department of state. 
Our Government knew nothing about the matter, but at 
the urgent request of the French Government sent a 
special agent to Oklahoma to investigate. No French- 
man had been kidnapped. There was no organization 
of negroes and no cave in the locality described in the 
story. After considerable diplomatic correspondence 
the French Government was satisfied that no citizen 
of France had been outraged. 

Dave's full name is David Demosthenes Leahy, but 
a Caldwell jeweler who did not know much about 
Demosthenes, insisted on dubbing him "Dynamite 
Dave" and the title stuck. Dave's first location in 
Kansas was in the town of Caldwell, then one of the 
wildest towns of the border. He used to tell the story 
that he got his first job as a grocery clerk and slept 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 207 

in the store. He made his bed in the front window 
and when he woke up in the morning and looked out 
there were three dead men lying in the street and on the 
sidewalk. 

Afterward he went into the newspaper business and 
established a reputation as a writer. It was in the 
spring of 1887 that Dave located in Barber County in 
the town of Kiowa. A corporation had been organized 
which leased the Kiowa Herald, the paper which had: 
been started by Dennis T. Flynn. Dave was employed 
as editor and manager. He was at that time a ran- 
tankerous Democrat and insisted that he should be 
permitted to run a Democratic paper. His strong 
Democratic proclivities may be judged from the fol- 
lowing notice which appeared in a Republican con- 
temporary under date of June 14, 1887: 

"D. D. Leahy is the proud father of a big bouncing 
boy born to his wife on Wednesday last at Caldwell. 
'Dynamite' feels stuck up, of course, but we venture the 
son doesn't, anyway he won't we know when he learns 
that his dad has named him Cleveland Thurman. It may 
be, however, that Mrs. Leahy will have something to say 
about that and thus save the baby." 

Dave's style of writing at that time in controversy 
with a rival editor was to treat him as "Our Loathed 
Contemporary." I quote the following references to 
another Barber County editor: "That unmitigated 
scoundrel and professional blackleg, the bilious nonde- 
script that runs the " In another issue he un- 
burdens himself about the same editor whom, I think, to 
that time he had never seen, as "The non compos mentis 
journalist; this flagrant blatherskite; this audacious 
poltroon; this cantankerous jackass; this lunatic at 
large ; this brainless, chicken-eating dude." In another 
issue he refers to the same loathed contemporary as a 



208 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

"Brachylurous, besulcanus amphibious boralapus." 
That I think held the loathed contemporary for a while 
as he had no idea what Dave meant and Dave not being 
certain about it either, they just let it go at that. 

At that time one Andrew Jackson Jones was county 
attorney. After his election Jones and his partner 
entered into a pleasant and profitable arrangement by 
which they dissolved partnership, although still having 
an office together. The word was given out that those 
charged with violations of law, especially the prohibi- 
tory law, would find it to their advantage to consult 
the former partner of the county attorney. Under this 
arrangement the former partner collected a monthly 
fee of $25 from each of the jointists in the county and 
divided with the county attorney. While at that time 
Dave was violently opposed to the prohibitory law he 
decided that the county attorney, whom he had never 
seen, was not playing fair with the Kiowa jointists. 
Under date of June 14 1 quote from a column editorial 
roasting Jones to a deep rich brown, the following: 
"Mr. Jones, the county attorney, came down from 
Medicine Lodge on Monday night last under cover of 
the midnight darkness to pounce upon some unsuspect- 
ing poor wretch that might perchance be dispensing 
the prohibited fluid in violation of law." Mr. Jones 
had in fact gone down to see if the "poor wretches" 
who "might perchance be dispensing the prohibited 
fluid" were all coming across properly. 

Some reader of the Journal came the next day to 
see Dave and told him that Jones had the reputation 
of being a very "bad man from Kentucky" and that in 
all probability he would be looking for the editor with 
a gun. A few days after that a man wearing long and 
flowing whiskers entered the office. 

"My name is Jones, the county attorney. I have 
observed, Mr. Leahy, that you are getting out a real 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 209 

true blue Democratic paper. I want to congratulate 
you, as a loyal and life long Democrat, sir, from 
Kaintucky. What we need in this country, sir, are 
editors who will preach the true Democracy, sir. I 
want to subscribe for twenty-five copies of your paper, 
sir. Here are the names and I want to pay for them 
now." Whereupon Jones pulled out a roll of bills and 
paid for twenty-five subscriptions for a year in ad- 
vance. 

As a result of this unexpected visit I find in the 
issue of July 31, 1887, the following local mention: 

"County Attorney Jones was a caller at our sanctum 
yesterday and notwithstanding the fact that a little misun- 
derstanding has existed recently between him and the Her- 
aid, nevertheless he showed no signs of belligerency." 

It is only fair to state, however, that the county 
attorney did not succeed in entirely squaring himself 
with "Dynamite Dave" as was indicated by the follow- 
ing notice in the issue of August 4, 1887, which read 
as follows: 

"We expect to prove that the operation of a certain 
statute law has been suspended for a stipulated sum per 
month, and not only that, but we expect to prove that it 
is possible for horse thieves and other high-handed vil- 
lains to escape the penalty of the law for sums of money 
ranging from $250 up to $1,000,, according to the ability 
of the criminals, their pals and friends to pay." 

If the first notice called for twenty-five paid up sub- 
scriptions from County Attorney Jones that one ought 
to have called for at least fifty. 

Those who know Dave now may be surprised to learn 
that he once aspired to dramatic honors. He was a 
member of the Kiowa Home Dramatic Club which put 
on the stage the play, "Capitolia, or the Hidden 



210 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Hand." Dave took the part of the heavy villain, Black 
Donald. After the rendition of the play the following 
brief account of his effort appeared in the Herald: 
"The heavy demoralized, knock-down and drag-out 
villain of the play was D. D. Leahy, who owing to a 
serious cold which he tried to drown in brandy and 
water, could not perform the part so well as if his 
physical condition had been enjoying its usual boom." 
This is not up to his usual literary style at that time, 
which might indicate that he and his cold were still 
partially submerged at the time it was written. 

His stay in Barber County covered a period of only 
six months, but as a Barber County man remarked, 
he managed to raise considerable hell for the time he 
was there. 

During the past few years Dave has been content 
to follow the uneventful and monotonous life of an 
office holder. I might also say that since his short and 
stormy sojourn in Barber he has changed his views 
about everything except religion. He is no longer a 
Democrat. He is an ardent Prohibitionist and an 
advocate of woman suffrage. In religion he is still a 
believer in the infallibility of the Pope and a devoted 
adherent of the Catholic Church. 



Two Frontier Doctors 

Along in the middle eighties two physicians settled 
in the town of Medicine Lodge. One of them, Doctor 
Meinke, I think was born on foreign soil and talked 
with a rather pronounced foreign accent. Doctor 
Dunn was American born. Neither of them was noted 
in his line, but they had one trait in common : they were 
investigators and genuinely interested in their pro- 
fession. 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 211 

Doctor Meinke was a good-natured, likable sort of 
man, who made friends readily and soon began to 
gather up his share of what practice there was in the 
little frontier town, but it may be said in passing that 
it was a healthy country and then the inhabitants were 
accustomed to staying out doors the most of the time, 
which tended to cut down the business of the doctors. 
In the course of a minor operation, perhaps treating 
a carbuncle, Doctor Meinke unfortunately received a 
scratch on the hand which became infected. He failed 
to give it the prompt attention he should have done, 
and at any rate the value of antiseptics was not so well 
known then as now. The infection spread rapidly until 
there was a well developed case of blood poisoning, 
which did not yield to such remedies as were at hand. 
Within two days the case was beyond control, at least 
beyond control of the physicians whose services could 
be obtained, and Meinke with a cheerful courage I have 
rarely seen equaled, took to his bed and prepared to die. 

Apparently without any fear of death, he was deeply 
interested in the progress of the poison that was 
spreading through his veins and arteries, and calling 
for his thermometer, he calmly took his own tempera- 
ture and with fevered fingers took his racing pulse and 
noted both on a pad, together with comments on his 
feelings. When he grew too weak to take his own pulse 
and temperature he had the attending physician do it 
for him and take down his statements as to his feelings, 
such as, "Feel that I am going pretty fast, rising tem- 
perature, mouth dry, constriction of muscles of throat, 
sight seems to be growing dim, fear that I may become 
delirious — not suffering a great deal of pain." With 
trembling hand he would sign the record and then rest 
awhile, then call for a stimulant, and again insist that 
a record be made of the progress of the malady. With- 
out a murmur of complaint, his failing powers and 



212 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

faculties centered on the one desire to make a record 
of the experience of a dying man, he held to his purpose 
until his voice failed, the pencil fell from his nerveless 
fingers, and Meinke was dead. So far as I know, this 
remarkable record was not preserved. Quite possibly 
it would be of no particular benefit to science if it were, 
but it always struck me as a unique, courageous, and 
rather pleasant way to die. 

The experience of Doctor Dunn was different but 
almost as interesting. At that time stockmen were 
troubled a great deal with the loco weed. This weed, 
whose botanical name I believe is "Astragalus hornii," 
grows abundantly on some of the ranges in southwest 
Kansas. Both cattle and horses learn to like it and 
when once addicted to the loco habit it is almost as 
difficult to cure them as it is to wean the confirmed 
opium eater from Ins drug. The effect of the weed 
on the animal is peculiar. It seems to produce a kind 
of insanity. A locoed horse becomes entirely un- 
manageable. A cow or steer which gets to be a con- 
firmed loco eater loses its appetite for nourishing food ; 
its hair becomes rough and the eye has the wild look 
of dementia. Under the influence of the weed the 
animal seems to lose all sense of proportion. It will 
imagine that a rope lying on the ground or a small 
stick is a huge log and will at first refuse to cross it, 
but if forced to do so will vault high in the air. While 
cattle may not die as a result of eating the weed, they 
will not thrive and for practical purposes might as 
well be dead. 

Dr. Dunn became greatly interested in this weed and 
decided to make some experiments. He procured a 
number of the plants and boiled them until he had ex- 
tracted the juices which formed a sort of thick liquor, 
of about the consistency of Orleans molasses. The 
doctor, it must be said, had his nerve with him. He did 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 213 

not experiment on his mother-in-law or his wife or his 
dog, but drank the decoction himself. I was much in- 
terested in the results and regret that I did not at the 
time make a careful record of them. He told me that 
at first it did not seem to have much if any effect, but 
after a time he began to have peculiar sensations. The 
first sensation, as I now recall, was a burning in his 
stomach and a racking headache. Then things began 
to look queer to him. He said that he could understand 
the feeling of a locoed horse. He lost the sense of 
proportion. The gypsum hills began to look like lofty 
mountains and an ordinary cow pony looked larger 
than an Asiatic elephant. Everything had a distorted, 
unreal appearance and he felt that he must hold his 
grip on himself or go mad. After a time the feeling 
began to wear off and he felt a reaction and great 
weakness. After a few hours all bad effects seemed to 
have disappeared and he returned to his normal con- 
dition. Just what he had in mind in making this rash 
experiment I do not know, unless he hoped to discover 
some antidote for the weed. I never heard that he did 
this, or even that he carried his experiments any 
further. 

"I can't say," he remarked to me privately, "that I 
would care to experiment any more, but I have dis- 
covered one compensation that might come from being 
locoed. You know that there isn't much practice 
around here for a doctor and the fees are light and not 
many of them. Well while I was under the influence of 
the loco syrup I took out a dollar bill and bless me if 
it didn't look like twenty dollars. My philosophy is 
that it is not so much what you have as what you think 
you have that counts, and if I could multiply my in- 
come by ten, in my mind, by eating loco it might be 
worth while." 



214 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Carrie Nation 

It was in the later eighties when the Rev. David 
Nation came to Medicine Lodge as pastor of the Chris- 
tian church in the little western town. I may say, 
advisedly, that David accompanied his wife, Carrie, for 
at no time during their matrimonial career did David 
attain to a higher rank than second lieutenant in that 
household. Carrie, whatever her virtues and whatever 
her faults, and she had both in a marked degree, was 
always militant, always dominant, always in evidence. 
If she was not placed at the head of whatever proces- 
sion she happened to be in, she organized another 
procession. I have often watched her and David with 
interest on their way to church, Carrie marching like 
a drum major some feet in advance, David bringing up 
the rear a trifle humped of shoulder and perhaps a bit 
uncertain of step. "Onward, Christian Soldiers" ap- 
pealed to her martial nature. Her not unshapely nose 
tilted at a belligerent angle and when she was engaged, 
figuratively or actually, in storming the battlements of 
sin as she understood them, her eyes lit up with the joy 
of battle and her cheeks flamed with the excitement of 
conflict. She was possessed of the courage of a 
crusader and the zeal of a bigot, with a frankness that 
was delightful when it was not embarrassing. 

When her husband, David, took his place in the 
pulpit, Carrie occupied a pew well to the front and 
entered into the devotions with a whole-hearted earnest- 
ness that imparted itself to the rest of the congrega- 
tion. In the singing her voice rose above all the others 
in vibrant and triumphant peans of thanksgiving and 
praise, for with Carrie Nation religion was no mere 
matter of form. Others might have doubts ; she had 
none. Prayer might be with other professors of re- 
ligion largely lip service, but with her it was direct 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 215 

communication with the Most High and she was as 
certain as the Hebrew prophets that she received direct 
revelations and direction from Jehovah on His throne. 
Withal, however, she was rather practical in her re- 
ligion. She wearied of droning commonplaces and 
longed for the stirring call of the bugle and the gleam- 
ing banners of the army of the Lord. When David's 
sermons grew prosy, which was not unusual, Carrie 
would listen for a few minutes in impatience and then 
announce in a voice of finality and authority, "That 
is enough for to-day, David," and it was, for David at 
least had the wisdom to know where he should get off, 
when it was pointed out to him in that way. 

To those who did not know her well, Carrie seemed 
astonishingly abrupt at times. Once the late Al Green, 
formerly well known newspaper writer and for many 
years traveling correspondent for the Kansas City 
Journal, visited Medicine Lodge for the express pur- 
pose of seeing and interviewing Carrie Nation. She 
did not know he was coming and had never seen him. 
He was directed to her residence and found her stand- 
ing at the gate. He introduced himself saying, "My 
name is Green." Carrie did not ask what his business 
was or why he wanted to see her, but as her first salu- 
tation asked: "Are you a Christian?" The suddenness 
and unexpectedness of it rather knocked him, off his 
mental balance, but he landed on his feet and replied: 
"For the purpose of this occasion Mrs. Nation we will 
assume that I am." 

The whisky joint was her special aversion and long 
before she became famous she was a thorn in the flesh 
of the officers who failed to do their duty under the 
law and fearlessly tackled the joint keepers themselves 
when she had the opportunity. Joints flourished to 
some extent in the town of Medicine Lodge, but in the 
border town of Kiowa, they were openly encouraged 



216 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

and protected by the city authorities and apparently 
regarded with approval by a majority of the citizens. 
Carrie Nation declared that the Lord appeared to her 
in a dream or vision and told her that it was her duty 
to go to Kiowa and break up these dens of iniquity. 
So Carrie went. 

Apparently, the Lord had not suggested the utility 
of the hatchet at that time, as Carrie went to Kiowa 
armed as David when he went forth to put the fixings 
on the giant, Goliath, except that Carrie had no sling. 
She had, however, an apronful of stones of convenient 
size and roughness, and with these she marched into the 
leading booze dispensary and immediately went into 
action. Probably her aim was not very accurate, for 
she threw overhand and wildly, after the manner of 
women, but then the bar extended from one end of the 
room almost to the other, and a rock heaved in that 
general direction was bound to hit something. It was 
immaterial whether it struck what Carrie aimed at or 
a bottle or mirror at the other end of the building, the 
wreck and destruction was just as great. The city 
marshal ran in to quell the disturbance, and what 
Carrie said to him was indeed a plenty, for with her 
other gifts and accomplishments she had an extensive 
and virile vocabulary. She was not arrested for this 
first raid, as I recall, and her purpose was strengthened 
to go forth alone, if need be, to storm the battlements 
of sin. 

Whether it was the result of another revelation or 
the suggestion of a friend, or the prompting of a 
practical mind I do not know, but probably it occurred 
to her that she could do more execution with a hatchet 
than with stones, and furthermore a hatchet would be 
easier to conceal. Her next raid was in the city of 
Wichita, where there were gilded saloons in those days 
protected by the police, in consideration of which they 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 217 

contributed a good many thousand dollars every month 
to the city treasury. Carrie made her debut as a 
smasher in the "Windy City" on the Arkansas, by 
breaking a large mirror and a number of bottles and 
other glassware in the largest saloon. She was ar- 
rested and thrown into the city jail, but as soon as she 
could get out went on her way smashing as she went. 
It was some time before she visited Topeka and 
wrecked a joint there. She was again arrested and 
thrown into jail, but her work was having an effect on 
the public mind. 

It so happened that at one time Carrie Nation and 
a little woman by the name of Blanche Boise were both 
in jail charged with disturbing the peace because they 
had broken windows and otherwise damaged places 
where booze was unlawfully sold, while joint keepers 
were plying their unlawful business unmolested by the 
officers of the law. There is a certain love of fair play 
in the mind of the average American, and this revolted 
at the transparent injustice of punishing a couple of 
weak women, while joint keepers were permitted to sell 
their poison contrary to law and go unmolested. 

I have often heard it said that Carrie Nation was 
simply a seeker after notoriety. I want to say that the 
charge was not true. It is quite possible that after her 
fame became world-wide and the name of Carrie Nation 
was known all 'round the globe, she grew to enjoy the 
limelight and publicity, but from the very beginning 
she was actuated by an honest and courageous purpose. 
She was a fanatic, mistaken, I think, in her methods of 
operation, but, spurred on by the zeal of a martyr, she 
would have gone smiling to the stake and lifted up her 
voice in triumphant song as she stood amid the flames. 

I have said that she was a woman of pronounced 
faults and pronounced virtues, but her good qualities 
far outweighed her faults. She was generous to a 



218 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

fault, and always ready to help the needy and afflicted. 
She would have smashed a joint until it was an utter 
wreck, but if the next day she had found the joint 
keeper in want or sickness, she would have nursed him 
back to health and given of her substance to feed him 
and his family. How much Carrie Nation had to do 
with stirring up the prohibition sentiment in the coun- 
try, which grew in volume, until it swept the nation, 
cannot, of course, be determined, but that her unique 
methods and personality and her indomitable courage 
and energy had an effect on public sentiment, there can 
be no question. 

The Discomfited Hypnotist 

Along in the middle eighties Medicine Lodge grew 
ambitious to have a hotel that would be a credit to the 
town. The railroad was building in and the expecta- 
tion was that there would be a boom. A stock com- 
pany was organized and a three-story brick hotel was 
erected that was regarded with pride by the inhabit- 
ants. Among the landlords that ran the hotel during 
the next few years was one Mortimer Strong, commonly 
known as Mort Strong. Mort's idea about running a 
hotel was not to let the guest take any more money 
away than could be helped. If he had more mazuma 
than was necessary to pay for his food and lodging, if 
he had any sporting tendency, and most travelers in 
that part of Kansas at that time did have more or less 
sporting tendencies, he was inveigled into a game of 
draw poker, and as the game was put up against him, 
his skin was removed with deftness, but not necessarily 
with dispatch. It was not always to the interest of 
the hotel to separate the guest from his coin at the 
first sitting. That sort of abrupt procedure was liable 
to discourage the guest and arouse suspicions in his 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 219 

mind ; besides, if the sessions about the card table could 
be prolonged for two or three evenings, the hotel bill 
increased in proportion. Mort was not the kind of a 
person to conceal from his right hand what his left 
hand was doing. Suffice it to say that the stranger 
within the gates who stopped at the Grand Hotel rarely 
got away until he had been skinned in a workmanlike 
and thorough manner. 

Mort Strong was a versatile soul who enjoyed a 
practical joke almost as well as he enjoyed putting 
up a hand in a poker game. I might say here that 
Mortimer also ran a hotel in Medicine before the Grand 
was built. I am not entirely positive whether the in- 
cident about to be related occurred in the old hotel or 
the new, but think it was in the new. The Kansas City 
Star at that time had a descendant of Abraham as its 
subscription solicitor in southwest Kansas and in the 
course of his travels the young Jew landed at Medicine 
Lodge. 

He was unfamiliar with the ways of the border and 
full of conversation. It was not long until Mort 
Strong and the loafers who congregated about the hotel 
discovered that here was a most promising subject for 
contribution to their joy of life. He happened to 
remark that he was interested in the subject of hypno- 
tism and had studied and practiced it to a considerable 
extent. Immediately the crowd was interested. Some 
of them scoffed at the possibility that the Star repre- 
sentative was able to hypnotize anybody, but others 
warmly championed him. The controversy even grew 
personal and bitter, but it was finally proposed to settle 
the question by having the Israelite try his powers on 
a subject. He was willing, but said of course he wasn't 
a regular professional and maybe couldn't put the 
subject under the influence of the hypnotic spell, but he 
was willing to try. The subject was found in the son 



220 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

of the hotel keeper, Mort Strong. Frank Strong was 
a man grown, a large stalwart man. He expressed 
doubt about the ability of any Jew to put him to sleep 
but was willing to let him try. 

Before the experiment commenced young Strong put 
something in his mouth which when chewed gently and 
mingled with saliva would create a sort of lather. The 
Jew commenced to make passes at young Strong and 
talk to him in a commanding and at the same time 
soothing tone of voice: "You vas goin' to schleep now. 
Go to schleep. Go to schleep !" 

The effect was satisfactory beyond the hypnotist's 
most sanguine expectations. Young Strong's eyes 
closed. He fell back on the couch and seemed to be 
wrapped in profound slumber. The Jew was delighted. 
"You see, gentlemens, he vas schleepin' shust like a 
leedle babe," he said. Just then something happened 
that he had not counted on. Young Strong began to 
foam at the mouth. The elder Strong at once became 
apprehensive. "What's the matter with him, young 
feller?" he yelled at the frightened Jew. "Get him 
from under this hypnotic spell of yours and get him 
out of it d — n quick or there will be something doing, 
believe me." 

The Jew began frantically to make passes at the 
apparently unconscious man and call on him to "vake 
up," but the more he worked the more young Strong 
foamed at the mouth. The fury of Mort Strong grew 
apace. He was restrained from making a bodily attack 
on the amateur hypnotist only by the combined effort 
of several of the loafers, who begged of him not to kill 
the Jew because nobody else around there would have 
any idea how the young man could be brought out of 
the trance. Meantime the consternation of the Jew 
increased. Great drops of sweat stood out on his fore- 
head, as he called pleadingly but with no effect for 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 221 

young Strong to "vake up." Apparently the condition 
of the sleeping man was growing worse. His breathing 
became labored and the foam from his mouth flecked his 
lips and ran from the corners of his mouth. 

It was well along in the evening, near bed time when 
the experiment was undertaken; by midnight the ex- 
citement had reached fever heat. Mort Strong was 
heaping imprecations on the young Israelite and de- 
claring that unless his boy was brought out of the 
trance he would kill the man who had put him under 
the spell. Finally he declared that he wouldn't stand 
it any longer and swearing vengeance rushed out of the 
room. 

"Mort has gone for his gun !" one of the loafers, who 
had exerted himself to save the Jew from assault at the 
hands of the grief-crazed father, whispered to the Jew. 
"If you are here when he comes back I can't save you. 
You had better make your getaway now. Head south 
for Kiowa. I will try to keep him from following you. 
There is a train leaves Kiowa early in the morning. 
It's not quite twenty miles from here. If you hit the 
grit fast enough you ought to be able to make it before 
that train pulls out." 

It seemed to the Jew to be good advice. He grabbed 
his hat and coat and faded rapidly into the night head- 
ing for Kiowa twenty miles away. It was a sore-footed 
and wearied man who limped into the Kiowa depot at 
an early hour the next morning, but he was reasonably 
happy, for he hadn't been followed and he had caught 
the train. 

The Story of a Bank Wrecker 

About the year 1868 or 1869 there came to the new 
state of Kansas a young man possessed, according to 
his own statement, of $4,000, coupled with marvelous 



222 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

nerve, unbounded ambition, and unhandicapped in his 
dreams of exploitation by scruples suggested by a 
tender conscience. J. S. Danford, the young man in 
question, located in the new town of El Dorado, and 
founded the Walnut Valley Times, taking in Col. Bent 
Murdock as a partner and afterward selling out his 
interest to the latter. 

The banking business offered a more inviting field 
for a man of the tastes and ambitious of Danford than 
a newspaper in a small town, so he blossomed out as a 
banker. Fortune smiled on him. His bank paid enor- 
mous dividends. He was a man of pleasing address, 
pleasing manners, and constantly increasing popular- 
ity. He took a hand in politics and was the valued 
adviser of senatorial candidates. At one time he en- 
joyed the reputation of being the most popular banker 
in the state. From El Dorado he moved to Osage City, 
then enjoying a boom on account of the discovery of 
coal. Senator Plumb was one of the principal stock- 
holders in the new venture, and men of lesser note were 
glad to hold blocks of the bank's capitalization. The 
game seemed easy and Danford began to establish 
banks at various points. Carbondale was a small side 
issue. Larger banks were established at the border 
towns of Caldwell, Hunnewell, and Arkansas City. 
With accumulating prosperity, acquaintance, and 
power, Danford became a lavish spender. Wine, 
women, and song called for extensive expenditures and 
the stock market made drains on his revenues. 

It was about 1880, or 1881 that his banks began to 
get in bad repute. At that time there was no state 
banking department and the bank wrecker had easy 
sailing. Still Danford was not ready to scuttle and 
leave. He was trying, like the skillful vaudeville artist 
who keeps a half dozen balls in the air at the same time, 
to keep his several banks running until he could unload 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 228 

them on somebody else, as he had done in some cases 
already, or, failing in that, get the assets in shape so 
that he could realize on them and make his getaway 
in safety. 

He gathered up a bunch of his best appearing securi- 
ties and went to St. Louis, with the intention of se- 
curing a loan of currency to tide him over, but failed 
and decided that there must be a receivership. On his 
way home he secured the services of Captain Joe 
Waters, still a leading attorney, orator, and poet at the 
ripe age of eighty-three, John Martin, afterward 
United States senator, now dead, and Ellis Lewis, lead- 
ing attorney of Osage City. In a conference which 
lasted until midnight it was agreed that Major Calvin 
Hood, of Emporia, should be selected as receiver and 
that Captain Waters should go with Danford to Osage 
City, Carbondale, and on to Wellington for the purpose 
of making the settlement. 

To the last Danford played his game magnificently. 
He was no piker. He hired a special train to take him 
and his attorneys on their journey. At Wellington 
Danford and Captain Waters stopped at the Phillips 
House, the best hotel in the town, and there Captain 
Waters confesses that he began to realize the serious- 
ness of the situation and that he was along rather as 
a rear guard than as legal advisor. It may be that 
Danford himself did not realize until he got there, just 
what he had to face. So far his luck had never for- 
saken him. He had always been able to make men be- 
lieve in him. He was a born confidence man, and artist 
of superior ability. He, too, had plenty of sporting 
blood in his veins. It may be that even if he had known 
that the rough, weatherbeaten men of the cattle ranges 
who had deposited in his banks, were ready now to mob 
him, he would still have dared to face them and take 
the chance of mastering them by his cool assurance 



224 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

and plausible promises. At any rate, once in the 
danger zone he displayed a coolness probably never 
excelled and which excited a degree of admiration even 
among the men who had gathered to hang him. Captain 
Waters, although there was no reason why the deposi- 
tors should desire his execution, confesses that he was 
filled with greater fear and trepidation than Danford 
displayed even when death seemed to be staring him 
in the face and his earthly pilgrimage apparently 
limited to a few brief and fleeting minutes. 

The cowboys whose money had gone into the Cald- 
well "Drovers Bank" were gathering at the Phillips 
House in increasing numbers. The guns they were 
carrying were in evidence on every hip, but as Captain 
Waters says, the most ominous thing was the number 
of long, supple lariats the men were carrying, when 
there was not a steer to be roped within twenty miles. 
These men from the range found Danford and inter- 
viewed him. They were hot, angry, threatening. Dan- 
ford was cool as an Arctic icicle. One cowboy com- 
plained that he had lost all his hard-earned wages in 
the bank, $1,800 in all. Danford coolly tossed him a 
$20 gold piece, with the remark that that would supply 
his immediate wants. The depositors from the range 
demanded that Danford go to Caldwell and settle up 
with them, and although he must have known that it 
was like placing his head in the lion's mouth or his neck 
in the lariat noose, Danford agreed to go. They pro- 
posed to haul him from Wellington to Caldwell in a 
wagon, but with magnificent nerve he proposed to 
charter a train and take all of the party down at his 
expense, and in this state he rode into the border town. 

Along with him went two more of his attorneys, 
Judge Campbell, of Wichita, known in those days as 
"Tiger Bill," and J. W. Haughey. The presence of 
the lawyers seemed to irk the crowd of men, who were 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 225 

bent on either getting their money or hanging Danf ord. 
The lawyers might, in some way, interfere with the 
proceedings. They were told that the space of ten 
minutes would be given them to get out of town and 
that there was a freight going north within that time. 

"You are prodigal of time, gentlemen," said "Tiger 
Bill," "unless my estimate of the distance to the depot 
is at fault. I will return to you five of the golden 
minutes you have so generously donated in which to 
make our exodus." 

Danf ord, the bank wrecker, faced the mob without 
legal counsel, but with magnificent courage. Looking 
the leaders of the angry mob square in their eyes, he 
told them, with as much apparent confidence as if he 
had been telling the truth. 

"Gentlemen, I have plenty of assets to pay every 
dollar of my indebtedness. If the assets of these banks 
are insufficient, I shall have recourse to my private for- 
tune to pay you in full. If that is insufficient, I will give 
my body to be divided between you to square the debt." 

At this point a lean-visaged and squeaky-voiced man 
from the range, who was standing well back in the 
crowd, piped up eagerly : "I speak for a part of his 
gall." 

But for once his assurance had failed. He had not 
satisfied the crowd, which seemed to be growing rather 
more clamorous for his life. Yet his self-possession 
did not forsake him for a moment. A local preacher 
came forward and offered to pray for the man he sup- 
posed was doomed to die, but Danf ord would have none 
of it. "If you can make a prayer that will influence 
that mob not to hang me, make it damned quick, but 
otherwise don't waste your prayer. If I am to hang, 
I will settle with the Almighty my own way." 

Danford stepped back into the bank and then there 
came to his rescue his wife, a woman of queenly pres- 



226 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

ence and remarkable ability. As cool as her husband, 
she saved the life of the man who did not deserve her 
love or confidence. Standing quietly before the an- 
gered crowd, she immediately picked the leader and 
addressed herself to him. 

"You are a brave man and a man of sense," she said, 
"otherwise you would not be a leader of men." 

It was a center shot. It appealed strongly to the 
vanity of the leader in the only way he could have been 
appealed to. If she had called him a good man or even 
an honest man, it would not have touched him, but to 
be called a leader of men — that was the highest compli- 
ment that could be paid to a man of the range. She 
continued : 

"What good will it do you to hang my husband? 
If you let him live he will pay you, but if you hang 
him you make me a widow, but get nothing for your- 
selves." 

The leader hesitated and she knew she had won, and 
her husband would not die that night. 

"Let me go in and talk with him, boys," said the 
leader. "Maybe we can make him dig up the money, 
and that is all we want." 

He went into the bank. Danford was smoking as 
coolly as if the mob outside was a pleasant serenading 
party instead of men bent on taking his life. 

"What have you to offer, Danford?" asked the 
leader. "The boys are getting a trifle impatient." 

"So I perceive," said Danford, as he blew a ring of 
smoke in the air. "Well, here is a list of my assets. I 
will collect them and turn them over to you, but if you 
hang me you won't get a damned cent." 

Nerve and a woman's tact and judgment of men had 
won. The mob, at the suggestion of the leader, dis- 
persed. Danford went on his way a free man — and 
the depositors lost their money. 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 227 

I am indebted to Captain Waters, Danford's attor- 
ney, for the following summing up of his subsequent 
career and character: 

"His career since then has been a pilgrimage of bank 
looting in Chicago, Kentucky, Oregon, and other precincts 
not heard from. He was a born Apache. His methods 
were his own. He took no one into his confidence. If 
living, he still practices his unconquered bluff, and if dead, 
the celestial bank examiner will need to be on the eternal 
watch to prevent him from escaping from hell, climbing 
up to heaven the back way, and inducing the saints in the 
choir to exchange their golden crowns for stock which he 
would propose to organize in the New Jerusalem. 

"He only lacked a biographer to make him a classic. He 
convulsed the state for a while and rose to a prominent 
place in the ranks of frenzied finance; yet, it is remarkable, 
after the lapse of only thirty-nine years, how few recol- 
lect the incidents of his magnificent rise or the marvelous 
nerve of his spectacular fall." 



Dennis T. Flynn 

About the middle of June, 1884, a young Irishman 
who had been an office boy in the law office of Grover 
Cleveland, in Buffalo, and while there had picked up 
some knowledge of law, and who had somewhere learned 
something of the printers' trade, landed in Barber 
County, bringing with him a Washington hand press 
and a few fonts of type. It was Dennis T. Flynn, 
breezy and self-confident and acting on the principle 
that the world was his oyster and all that was necessary 
for him to do was to open it. 

The Santa Fe was getting ready to extend its lines 
into the Panhandle of Texas, but there was reason to 
believe that the extension would be halted at the state 
line, where a town would be built to accommodate the 



228 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

cattle men who ranged their herds on the Cherokee 
strip and the lands to the south. Back in the early 
seventies a little trading post had been established some 
eighteen miles south of Medicine Lodge and about 
three miles from the state line, named Kiowa. In the 
year 1884 it was no larger than ten years before. 
There were a few log and cottonwood shanties, one of 
them occupied as a general supply store. There was 
also a drug store, with all that that implied in south- 
west Kansas and a rambling log building used as a 
hotel. The proprietress of this hostelry was Mrs. Ada 
Chatham, who had married a brilliant but dissipated 
newspaper writer, Jim Chatham, who neglected and 
finally compelled his wife to shift for herself and child. 
It may be said to her credit that she not only made a 
success financially of the hotel business in the little 
frontier hamlet, but retained the respect of every 
cowboy and cattleman who patronized the log hotel. 
Her customers came from all over the range from the 
Arkansas River on the north to the Red River on the 
south, rough, bronzed men, but men who had a chival- 
rous regard for a woman who was possessed of virtue 
and tact, and Mrs. Chatham was endowed with both. 

When Dennis Flynn landed in old Kiowa the only 
place available for a newspaper office and printshop 
was a cottonwood shanty. One needs to have seen a 
cottonwood shanty that had stood the strenuous Kan- 
sas weather for six or seven or maybe ten years, to 
appreciate what this building was like. It used to be 
told of a Medicine Lodge carpenter who was a man of 
great deliberation, that on one occasion he got hold 
of a cottonwood plank to be used for flooring, and 
while he was considering how he would put it down the 
board warped round him and held him fast until an- 
other carpenter came to his rescue and sawed him out. 
It was also claimed that when a corpse was laid on a 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 229 

green cottonwood plank and placed tenderly out in the 
Kansas sunlight, in two hours the plank would wrap 
itself round the body of the dead and serve the double 
purpose of a coffin and a winding sheet. 

The building in which Dennis Flynn set up his print- 
shop had been, as I have said, exposed to the weather 
for several years. The door had warped itself loose 
from the hinges, the window casing had warped away 
from the sash, and the weather boarding had pulled 
the nails that fastened it to the studding. It was neces- 
sary occasionally for the editor and compositor to lay 
down his rule and shoo the cows out of the shop when 
they wandered in, impelled by bovine curiosity. The 
wind, blowing freely through the cracks between the 
weather boards, mingled sand, dust, tumble weeds, and 
prairie fuel with the type in the cases, and caused the 
editor to exclaim in bitterness of spirit that life was 
just one damn thing after another. 

On June 26, 1884, under these discouraging condi- 
tions, the future congressman got out the first issue of 
the Kiowa Herald and announced the editorial policy 
as follows : "The Herald chooses to be recognized as 
an independent paper devoted to no particular political 
or religious party." Three weeks afterward the Herald 
placed the names of Blaine and Logan at the head of 
its editorial column. The railroad missed the old town 
by three miles and the town of New Kiowa was born. 
The Herald was moved to the new town and in one of 
the first issues afterward I find this significant local 
item: "Mrs. Ada Chatham has opened a hotel. It is 
easy to guess who will get the trade." It was evident 
that the susceptible heart of the Irish editor was 
enmeshed and not very long afterward Mrs. Ada 
Chatham became Mrs. Dennis T. Flynn. 

Perhaps it is not out of place here to leave Dennis 
for a little space and speak of a matter of interest in 



230 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

connection with the widow Chatham, now many years 
Mrs. Dennis Flynn. By her first marriage she had a 
daughter, dark eyed and black haired as a gypsy maid. 
There was a strain of Indian blood in the Chathams 
which showed in little Dorothy, better known as Dot. 
Years later, when her stepfather became distinguished, 
Dot became a Washington belle. 

In 1889 the fortunes of Dennis Flynn had fallen to 
a rather low ebb. Investments in the new town had not 
proved as profitable as was expected, and Dennis was 
having an uphill pull. President Harrison had issued 
his proclamation opening old Oklahoma to settlement 
and fixing the day for the opening. It was known that 
the temporary capital of the new territory would be 
located at Guthrie, a town yet to be built. The sug- 
gestion was made to Dennis Flynn that he should go 
to Washington, see Congressman Peters of the Seventh 
Kansas district and get the appointment as postmaster 
for the new town. He fell in with the idea, but offered 
the objection that it was a long way to walk to Wash- 
ington and he had not the price of a railroad ticket. 
A friend offered to lend him the money. Dennis went 
to Washington, came back with the appointment, and 
went to Guthrie at the opening as postmaster. There 
was no building and no facilities for handling the mail, 
which poured in by the carload. A tent was erected, 
a force of clerks organized, and the mail was sorted on 
the ground. It is remarkable that this community of 
full 10,000 people, brought together from all parts of 
the United States, made up of all nationalities and 
speaking all kinds of languages, was so efficiently 
served that there was almost no complaint about the 
postoffice. That was the beginning of the career of 
Dennis Flynn in Oklahoma. Two years afterward he 
decided that he would like to be a delegate to Congress. 
He was still poor and another Kansas friend financed 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 231 

his campaign. The loan was paid back in monthly 
installments out of his salary after his election. 

As a delegate in Congress, Dennis Flynn attracted 
more attention and wielded more influence than any 
other delegate in that body. He developed a taking 
style of speaking that went especially well with the 
settlers in the new territory. When the Cherokee 
strip was opened, the land had to be paid for by the 
settlers. The argument for this was that the Govern- 
ment had to buy the land from the Indians. Flynn 
introduced and had passed the "Free Homes" bill, 
which relieved the settlers from their payments and 
gave them their homes on the same terms as home- 
steaders in other parts of the United States. 

With the bringing in of the state of Oklahoma, in- 
cluding all of the old Indian Territory, the state became 
hopelessly Democratic and Dennis went out of politics. 
But he had developed into as successful a business man 
as he was a politician and to-day he is rated as a 
millionaire. Temp or a mutantur. There was a time 
when I paid him $5 for an advertisement and he 
acknowledged to me that the coloring and designs on 
that bill looked far more beautiful to him than any of 
the paintings by the old masters. 



A Populist Judge 

When the Farmers' Alliance movement swept over 
Kansas the leaders determined that it was necessary to 
get control of the courts, and for that purpose Alliance 
conventions were held in most of the judicial districts 
to nominate candidates. The convention to nominate 
a candidate for judge for the district composed of the 
counties of Harper and Barber was held at the town 
of Attica. A tent had to be provided, for the reason 



232 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

that there was no building in the little town with 
sufficient capacity to accommodate half the crowd. 

Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease was the woman orator of 
the day. She was then in her prime and heyday of her 
popularity. I say without hesitation that of all the 
women speakers I have ever listened to, Mrs. Lease led 
all the rest in oratorical power. I will go further and 
say that I have never heard a man who could so sway 
an audience. She was a woman of striking presence, 
tall, not exactly handsome, but attractive in appear- 
ance. Nature endowed her with a voice of wonderful 
volume and carrying power. If you had not known 
that it was a woman speaking you would not have 
guessed it from her voice, which was a deep baritone, 
and yet sweet and clear as the notes of a deep-toned 
bell. She was giving her impassioned advice to the 
assembled Alliance delegates to raise less corn and more 
hell, and before she had finished ninety per cent of her 
auditors were ready to follow her advice. If she had 
suggested that they proceed to hang the nearest banker, 
I think the rope would have been furnished and, with 
some fanatical leader to direct, they would have pro- 
ceeded to elevate the unfortunate money loaner into 
the atmosphere. As a curtain-raiser on that occasion 
"Iron Jaw Brown" also made the welkin ring for about 
three-quarters of an hour. Never to my knowledge 
having seen a "welkin" I am a bit hazy about what is 
required to make one ring, but I am confident that if 
there were any welkins around in that vicinity on that 
occasion they must have rung when "Iron Jaw" turned 
himself loose. 

The Alliance was rather short on lawyers at that 
time; in fact I think the rules of the order precluded 
the admission of anyone to membership who made the 
practice of the law his profession or business. It was 
not considered necessary, however, to have a lawyer 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 233 

for judge. What they wanted was a man who would 
sit on the bench and deal out justice without regard to 
established precedents or the technicalities of the law. 

One of the things that Mrs. Lease sought to impress 
upon the minds of her hearers was that farm mortgages 
ought to be summarily wiped out. They were, as she 
dramatically explained, the chains that had been forged 
by the money power to bind the limbs of the toiling 
masses. 

Living on his claim near Attica, was a blond little 
man with long and flowing whiskers, by the name of 
George Washington McKay. It was claimed that at 
some time in the past he had attended a course of law 
lectures in Chicago, but if he had most of the knowledge 
of law he may have acquired had evaporated and his 
last name might have been fittingly changed to Neces- 
sity because he knew no law. Who suggested to him 
that he ought to be a candidate for judicial honors I 
do not know. I do not think more than half a dozen 
of the delegates to the convention had ever heard of 
him, but his name was sprung on the convention at the 
psychological moment, and I may say in passing that 
those were the times when psychological moments 
counted. So George W. McKay was nominated for 
the important office of judge of the district court and 
triumphantly elected. While at the time of his election 
he was utterly ignorant of court procedure and hardly 
possessed of even a smattering knowledge of law, it 
should be said for George W. McKay that he was very 
far from being a fool. During the eight years he sat 
upon the bench he acquired a fair knowledge of law and 
in all cases where his political prejudices did not inter- 
fere with his judgment, he came to be a fairly good 
judge. 

I have spoken of him as a little man, in that he was 
short in stature. Nature had been generous with him 



234 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

in the matter of body, but parsimonious in the matter 
of legs. In other words he had a body long enough for 
a tall man and legs rather too abbreviated for even a 
short man. He always wore when on the bench a long 
frock coat, which accentuated the length of his body 
and the shortness of his lower limbs. In those days 
the walks of Medicine Lodge were in bad repair. They 
were board walks, not well laid in the first place and 
badly warped by the fierce suns of southern Kansas. 
At the first term of court after Judge McKay's elec- 
tion, a Medicine Lodger was seen out with his hammer 
busily engaged in driving down the nails in the sidewalk 
that led to the courthouse. Asked why this sudden 
exhibition of industry and desire for municipal im- 
provement, he said: "Well, I just saw the new judge, 
and said to myself, if these here nails are left stickin' 
up along this sidewalk they will sure play thunder with 
the seat of his pants. As a loyal citizen I have respect 
for the court, and so seein' that nobody else will do it, I 
just decided that I would hammer them down." 

For a time after he went on the bench the new judge 
seemed to go on the theory that the supreme court of 
the state was not entitled to any particular considera- 
tion and that he was not subject to its jurisdiction, but 
after being jolted once or twice he abandoned that idea. 
During the time he was on the bench he adhered strictly 
to only one of the theories on which he was elected. 
He insisted that there should be no personal judgments 
left over after the sale of land under mortgage fore- 
closure. He would refuse to confirm the sale unless the 
sale of the land satisfied the mortgage. Theoretically 
there seemed to be considerable justice in this, but in 
practice it worked out mostly to the advantage of the 
sheriff, who received commissions on the amount for 
which the land sold at sheriff's sale. In Barber County 
it happened that the sheriff during the time when 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 235 

mortgage foreclosures were most abundant was a Re- 
publican, who profited to the extent of several hundred 
dollars by the ruling of the Populist judge. 

During McKay's term of office the boundaries of his 
district were changed and the counties of Kingman and 
Pratt added. With experience he became more con- 
servative, less radical, and also a much better lawyer. 
His integrity, so far as I know, was never questioned 
and during the later years of his service on the bench 
there was little complaint about his rulings or the man- 
ner in which he conducted the business of the court. 



The Stinger Stung 

• One day in the later eighties a man of decidedly 
bucolic appearance walked into one of the fashionable 
New York hotels and registered as Benjamin Ashley, 
of Abilene, Kansas. He wore ill-fitting, ready-made 
garments such as were in that day sold in frontier 
towns. His head was covered with the broad-brimmed 
white hat characteristic of the cattle country, and his 
face and hands were tanned and seamed by the winds 
of the prairie. He was apparently unused to city 
ways but seemed to be well supplied with cash. He 
notified the hotel clerk that he was in New York to have 
his eyes doctored and that later he intended to go to 
London where he could obtain the services of some 
distinguished oculist he had read about. He gave out 
the information that he had a big ranch out in Kansas 
and a lot of cattle, and had been mostly raised in the 
saddle. He also looked the part. His lower limbs had 
the parenthetical curve acquired by long sitting astride 
a horse and his walk was the gait of the typical cow 
man. 

He had some peculiar habits. One was to get up 



236 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

every morning at what to New Yorkers seemed an 
unearthly hour and take a ride on horseback. On 
these rides he used his well-worn rawhide bridle and 
Mexican saddle. Most of the rest of the day, except 
when he went ostensibly to call on his physician, he 
loafed about the hotel, picking up such acquaintances 
as he could after the free and friendly habit of the 
West. He was a reasonably free spender and not 
averse at all to standing treat, but so far as he was 
personally concerned he did not indulge to any con- 
siderable extent in "high balls" or any form of spirit- 
uous liquor, contenting himself almost always with a 
lemonade or vichy. 

One day the hotel clerk observed the mild mannered 
man from the West strolling through the hotel lobby 
in company with a young man whose face was well 
known to the regular promenaders on Broadway. This 
young man was always faultlessly dressed, clean 
shaven, of prominent features and good manners. He 
had a keen, glittering eye and peculiarly thin, tightly 
compressed lips. With his new-found friend, the weak- 
eyed and guileless child of the prairies, this young man 
sat for some time in the bar room of the hotel. It was 
noticed, too, that at the urgent invitation of the thin- 
lipped young man Mr. Ashley forsook his usual ab- 
stemious habits and partook rather freely of cham- 
pagne — at the expense of the young man. 

When the well-dressed New Yorker had departed, the 
hotel clerk called the Westerner and asked, "Mr. 
Ashley, how long since you have been in New York?" 

"Near eight year," replied Ashley, "never was here 
afore that and ain't never been here since till now." . 

"Do you know the man who just left you?" 

"Yes, met him two nights ago at the Madison Square 
Garden. I couldn't buy a seat and he offered me one 
of his ; said his friend hadn't come and he would be 
glad to accommodate a stranger, so him and me sat 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 237 

there together, talkin' and watchin' the sights. He 
seems to be a mighty nice sort of a feller." 

"I have no doubt of that," said the clerk, with an 
air of superior wisdom and hardly suppressed sarcasm. 
"That young man is 'Hungry Joe,' one of the most 
noted confidence men in America !" 

"You don't say so?" drawled the Westerner. "Well, 
I'll be doggo ned! Who'd a thought it? Why he is 
about the most friendly feller I have met in this man's 
town. Offered to show me 'round and set up the fizz 
water and put himself out of the way to make things 
pleasant for me. You must surely be mistaken about 
him bein' one of these here confidence men." 

Then Mr. Ashley strolled away, looking thoughtful. 
That evening after dinner "Hungry Joe" called for 
Mr. Ashley. As they came through the office the weak- 
eyed man from Kansas took from an inside pocket a 
large wallet from which he extracted about $500 in 
bills and deposited the wallet with the rest of its con- 
tents with the hotel. "Hungry Joe" watched the pro- 
ceeding with passive face but gleaming eye, and the two 
went away together. "Another sucker to be taken in," 
mused the hotel clerk as he looked after the pair. It 
was nearly morning when Mr. Ashley returned to the 
hotel; just in time, in fact, to take his usual early 
morning ride. When he returned he drew another $200 
and started out again. 

"I have warned you, Mr. Ashley," said the wise clerk 
from behind his immaculate shirt front and gleaming 
diamond. "It is your own fault if 'Hungry Joe' trims 
you." 

It was a little after midnight when the ranchman 
returned and deposited $300 with the clerk, remarking 
that these New Yorkers might be stiff on bunco, but 
they were a little behind the times on draw poker. 

"Out in my country," he said with a swagger, "two 
deuces and a bowie will open a jack pot every time." 



238 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

For several days after this Mr. Ashley passed the 
time in comparative seclusion and quiet. Then he 
yielded again to the seductions of the well dressed 
young man with the thin lips. In a day or two he drew 
$1,000 from the hotel safe and seemed annoyed when 
the clerk again reminded him that he had warned him. 

"No game ever fazed me yet," he said doggedly. "A 
man who kin hold his end up with them Kansas cowmen 
isn't goin' to be bested by any of these here durned 
broadcloth fellers in New York." 

"It's no use," mused the clerk after Ashley had gone. 
"You are wasting your breath trying to save these 
country rubes. Might as well let them be skinned first 
as last." 

The next day Ashley came back for another thou- 
sand and later for $850 more. 

"It's no use, no use," sighed the clerk. "There is 
one born every minute." 

That afternoon the weak-eyed Westerner went for a 
ride with "Hungry Joe." His face had been sad all 
morning, but it was noticed on his return that he seemed 
somewhat brighter. 

In the evening "Hungry Joe" and two of his well- 
known fellow confidence men spent several hours with 
Mr. Ashley, whose weak eyes made it necessary that he 
keep his broad hat pulled well down over his forehead. 
When the three men went away a close observer might 
have noticed the .shadow of a smile playing about the 
mouth of Mr. Ashley. Straight from the table where 
they had had the long conference, the three men went 
to the telegraph office and sent the following message: 

Postmaster, Abilene, Kansas: 

Do you know Benjamin Ashley, cattle raiser? Tele- 
graph full particulars at my expense. 

R. Dickson, 
Brower House, New York. 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 239 

When the reply came it evidently was in all respects 
satisfactory, and within two days Mr. Ashley received 
a visit from the three confidence men and a lawyer. 
The head porter of the hotel was called up into the 
room after the visitors had been there an hour or more 
and requested to append his signature to a certain 
document as a witness. This done, a large sum of 
money was paid over to Mr. Ashley by "Hungry Joe" 
and the weak-eyed, mild-mannered Westerner deposited 
$14,000 cold cash with the hotel clerk, to whom he 
explained that he had sold a half interest in his Kansas 
ranch to his new found friend, who wished to retire from 
city life. 

A couple of days later Mr. Ashley took passage for 
Liverpool on one of the passenger liners and was "seen 
off" by his New York friends in the most approved 
style. They toasted him in "yellow label" and even 
presented him with a basket of flowers. The crude 
Westerner was almost overcome by the attention and 
told them he would soon return and have more good 
times with them. 

It was just eleven days after this sailing that a tall, 
slender, pale-faced gentleman entered the hotel, ac- 
companied by numerous steamer trunks, steamer chairs, 
and other impedimenta of ocean travel. He signed the 
register "Benjamin Ashley, London, England," in a 
handwriting that was rather strikingly similar to that 
of the Mr. Ashley who had sailed eleven days before. 
The clerk who had been bending over the register looked 
at the tall, slender, well groomed stranger in amaze- 
ment which was increased as he noted that his speech, 
like that of the other Ashley, had a sort of American- 
ized English accent. In a sort of daze he assigned 
him a room and that evening saw to it that the full 
name and address of Benjamin Ashley was published 
among the list of arrivals from abroad. 

As he expected, the first caller in the morning was 



240 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 



a 



Hungry Joe," who sent up his card with the request 
to see Mr. Ashley. The word was brought back that 
Mr. Ashley would see him in the drawing room. When 
the tall, slender pale Englishman entered the drawing 
room, "Hungry Joe" was seated in a large arm chair. 
He merely glanced at the stranger and then looked 
away. Mr. Ashley, seeing no one else in the room, ad- 
vanced to where "Hungry Joe" was sitting and courte- 
ously asked: "Were you wanting to see me, sir? I am 
Mr. Ashley." 

"Eh?" queried the confidence man with a startled 
look. "You are not Mr. Benjamin Ashley?" 

"Precisely," answered the Englishman. 

"Not of Kansas?" 

"Yes, of Abilene, Kansas. How can I serve you?" 

The thin lips of the confidence man went white. He 
surveyed the tall Englishman in a dazed fashion for a 
few moments and then asked: 

"Do you own a large cattle ranch thirty-five miles 
south of Abilene?" 

"I believe so. Why do you ask?" 

"Been to Europe to have your eyes doctored?" 

"Yes. I have been abroad four months ; but, my 
young friend, these questions are rather odd, don't you 
know. Please explain yourself." 

"Odd," almost shouted the thin lipped confidence 
man. "Well I should think they are. If you are 
Benjamin Ashley, and if you do own that ranch, the 
cleverest man in the country has given me a deal, that's 
all. Why it isn't two weeks since I and two friends 

bought a half interest in that ranch and by the 

man who sold us stopped at this same hotel." 

Mr. Ashley seemed to be astonished at this informa- 
tion and called the clerk, who gave a careful description 
of the other Mr. Ashley. "Hungry Joe" told how he 
had won some $3,250 at cards from this pretended 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 241 

Ashley, who said he was on his way to Europe to have 
his eyes treated. He had represented himself as the 
owner of the Ashley ranch and at his request the con- 
fidence man had telegraphed the postmaster at Abilene, 
who had replied, giving detailed description of the 
ranch and estimating its value at fully $50,000 and 
had added that Mr. Ashley had gone abroad for medi- 
cal treatment. The other Ashley had represented that 
he wanted to make certain expenditures in Europe but 
on account of his losses at cards he could not do it 
unless he could sell an interest in his Kansas ranch. He 
had produced deeds to establish his title, which had 
satisfied even the lawyers, and "Hungry Joe" and his 
pals, thinking here Was a chance to get at least $25,000 
worth of property for $14,000, had raised the money 
among them. 

"Really," observed the Englishman, "I am sorry for 
you. You have undoubtedly been swindled. I will not 
have the slightest trouble in establishing my identity 
and ownership. As to your friend, the bogus Mr. 
Ashley, he is probably one of my cowboys, Henry 
Barnes by name. The description certainly fits him. 
He came to the ranch about fourteen months ago and 
asked for work. Now I remember, he wasn't like the 
other boys. He may have been hiding for some crime 
for all I know ; on the plains we do not inquire much 
into such matters. He did his work all right and 
seemed rather more refined than the others, though he 
tried to conceal it. I heard once or twice from my 
men that he played a very cold hand at poker." 

"He does," said "Hungry Joe" mournfully. 

"He was an expert penman, now that I come to think 
of it," continued Mr. Ashley, "and did some of that 
kind of work for me. He was there when I came away." 

"And this is the cuss — damn him," burst in the de- 
frauded confidence man, "who got off to Europe with 



242 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

my money. What's worse he went away full of my 
champagne and smelling my basket of flowers. That 
man is a d — d swindler; that's what he is." 



Boston Corbett 

Some time before the Civil War there migrated from 
England to America a short, stocky youth who was 
destined to play a part in one of the world's great 
tragedies. John Corbett was a descendant of the 
"Roundheads," as the men were called who made up the 
army of Cromwell, the most remarkable body of fight- 
ing men that ever followed a leader to battle. Filled 
with a religious fanaticism which dispelled fear, they 
went to conflict chanting the psalms of David as their 
battle songs ; and welcoming death as a passport to 
Paradise, they dashed themselves upon and broke to 
pieces the bravest and best drilled battalions of Europe. 
They fought without excitement, boasting, or jubila- 
tion, but with a firm confidence that the God of battles 
marched with them and made them invincible by the 
power of His might. 

Fanaticism is a full brother of madness and in the 
blood of many of these followers of Cromwell there was 
the taint of insanity. The young "Roundhead" at- 
tended a religious revival in the city of Boston shortly 
after landing in America and became a convert imbued 
with all the religious fervor of his forebears. In honor 
of the locality where he felt he had received salvation 
he changed his name from John to Boston and from 
that time on was known as Boston Corbett. 

When the War of the Rebellion broke out he enlisted 
in a Massachusetts regiment and throughout his service 
showed the stoical intrepidity, the indifference to dan- 
ger and death which had characterized his ancestors, 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 243 

who, chanting their psalms and calling on the name of 
the Lord of Hosts, carried consternation and defeat to 
the royalist armies. 

On one occasion Boston Corbett was sent out with a 
scouting party, which was surrounded by Mosby's 
guerrillas. All of the scouts surrendered except 
Corbett, who took refuge in a dry well and stood off 
Mosby's command until his ammunition was exhausted. 
When he ceased firing, the rebels, supposing that he 
was either killed or desperately wounded, peeped over 
the rim of the well and discovered him sitting calmly 
at the bottom, munching hardtack as unconcerned as 
if there were no war. When captured he was sent to 
Anders onville, where he spent ten months in that prison 
hell. 

On most of the soldiers during the war, religion sat 
lightly, but with the fanatical descendant of the 
"Roundhead," war only deepened his fanaticism and 
religious fervor. He was a regular attendant and par- 
ticipant in the prayer meetings held by some of the 
men in his regiment and it was the voice of Sergeant 
Corbett which sounded the most fervent petitions to 
the Throne of Grace. 

When the immortal Lincoln was stricken down by 
the bullet of the half-mad actor, Corbett was among 
the soldiers sent in pursuit of the assassin. He re- 
garded himself as an avenger of blood, one selected 
by the Almighty to rid the world of the murderer of 
the president. 

Speaking of it years afterward, Corbett said: 
"During the intervals between our different skirmishes, 
I attended a prayer meeting one night and the leader 
said, 'Brother Corbett, lead us in prayer. 9 I prayed, 
'O Lord, lay not innocent blood to our charge, but bring 
the guilty speedily to punishment.' Afterward, when 
the assassin lay at my feet a wounded man, I saw that 



244* WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

a bullet had taken effect an inch back of the ear, and 
I remembered that Mr. Lincoln was shot in about the 
same part of the head. I exclaimed, 'What a God we 
have !' " 

The shooting of Wilkes Booth by Boston Corbett 
was contrary to orders and he was court martialed for 
disobedience, but no punishment was inflicted, so far 
as the record shows. 

It was some years after the war that Boston Corbett 
came to Kansas and filed on a homestead in Cloud 
County. It was a neglected eighty acres he acquired, 
and nature had not really fitted him for a farmer. 
Here in the solitude of the prairie he began to brood 
over things. He imagined that the friends of J. Wilkes 
Booth were plotting against his life. He was possessed 
of a revolver, and stories are told of his marvelous skill 
in the use of the weapon. Lying prone on his back he 
would shoot hawks circling high in the air above him, or 
riding at full speed on the only animal he possessed, a 
pony, he would shoot fleeing rabbits, rarely missing a 
shot. 

Some of the young people used to meet near his 
place on Sundays to play ball. He regarded this as a 
desecration of the Lord's day and proceeded to break 
up the game by command, as he asserted, of Jehovah. 
Complaint was made by the players and Boston was 
arrested. The trial was to be held in the office of a 
local justice of the peace. Corbett came in on the day 
appointed, watched the proceedings with gloomy 
countenance for a time, and then, drawing his revolver, 
commanded that the sons of Belial, constituting the 
court and jury, should disperse. They did — and that 
right speedily. The justice of the peace, a large and 
fleshy man, hid behind a stairway while jurymen, wit- 
nesses, and town loafers vied with each other for pos- 
session of the door and windows, as places of exit. 
Having scattered the forces of iniquity in the name of 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 245 

the Lord, Corbett mounted his pony and returned un- 
disturbed to his lonesome shanty on the claim. 

It was in the year 1887 that the member from Cloud 
County in an impassioned speech nominated the slayer 
of J. Wilkes Booth for the position of assistant door- 
keeper of the lower house. 

Those were the days when ex-soldiers of the Civil 
War still dominated the politics of Kansas and Boston 
Corbett was selected as assistant doorkeeper without 
opposition — although one member who knew Boston 
was heard to remark that the legislature would be in 
luck if Corbett didn't get a notion in his head that he 
was called by the Lord to kill off a few lawmakers 
before the session ended. For several weeks after his 
election Boston attended to the not very onerous duties 
of doorkeeper for the west gallery of the house. He 
was a peculiar, if not striking figure. His hair hung 
down to his shoulders and was parted in the middle. 
He was not averse to answering questions, but his face 
was never lighted by a smile. 

Probably the session would have passed without any 
striking incident so far as he was concerned, if he had 
not become interested in the Salvation Army, which 
was just then especially active. The methods of these 
religionists appealed to the militant soul of the 
"Roundhead." 

Night after night he marched with the devoted band 
which, with sound of drum and horn and clashing 
cymbal, with strident song and vociferous prayer, 
assailed the battlements of sin and invoked the aid and 
blessing of the Most High. The religious fervor that 
stirred the blood and brain of Boston Corbett led him 
to the conclusion that a number of legislators should be 
summarily removed from the places they occupied and 
that the legislative hall should be emptied, even as 
Christ drove the money changers from the Temple in 
Jerusalem. 



246 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

It was a sight calculated to arouse the members from 
the drowsy dullness that had settled over the routine 
proceedings, when the little man was seen one morning 
standing at the front of the gallery in the house, his 
trusty gun in hand and his eyes blazing with the light 
of fanatical insanity. The sergeant-at-arms sent up 
an assistant to urge him to put away his gun, but 
Corbett made him beat a hasty retreat. The sergeant- 
at-arms then went up in person and retired with speed, 
if not with grace of movement, as he fell down the 
gallery stair. 

Finally a number of police and deputy sheriffs were 
called in. Boston was overpowered, taken before the 
probate judge and there adjudged insane. Senator 
Charles Curtis, at that time county attorney, con- 
ducted the examination concerning his sanity. A few 
months afterward the slayer of Booth managed to get 
away from the hospital guard, mounted a horse he 
found near the asylum grounds and fled. A few miles 
from Topeka he left the horse with a note requesting 
that it be returned to its owner. Almost a third of ar 
century has passed since then and, while there have been 
rumors that he had been seen here and there, no definite 
word has ever come from Boston Corbett since that 
spring day when he fled away. 

Probably he has long since died, pursued to the last, 
no doubt, by the fancy that his enemies were pursuing 
him and seeking revenge for the killing of the slayer of 
America's greatest president. 



A Perfect Defense 

A good many old timers will remember Johnny Potts, 
of the T-5 range. Johnny seemed to hanker for a 
reputation as a bad man and tried to earn it and live 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 247 

up to it. Quite possibly he wasn't really as bad as he 
thought he was, but it may be said for him that he 
wasn't merely a bluffer as some cowboys who posed as 
bad men were. It may have been native courage or it 
may have been mostly vanity that made him show 
physical courage, but the fact was that he was really 
a dangerous man when his temper was roused and es- 
pecially when he had a drink or two under his belt. He 
was possessed of a mean and surly disposition and was 
one of the cases, fortunately not very numerous among 
cattle herders, who delighted in trying to convince 
tenderfeet that he was worse than he really was. 

By long practice he acquired considerable skill in 
handling the revolver and while he could not draw and 
shoot with the lightning rapidity acquired by men like 
Billie the Kid, or Wild Bill or Wyatt Earp, he could 
draw his gun quicker than most men, even among 
those who called themselves expert gunmen. It pleased 
him, when in a crowd, to draw his gun suddenly and 
fire it rapidly either into the air or down into the 
ground. In one respect he differed from a good many 
men who liked to shoot holes in the atmosphere. Most 
of them liked to make noises with their mouths. They 
would ride through the streets shooting in the air and 
yelling like wild Comanches. That was simply their 
way of grand-standing. Most of them were really 
harmless and only hurt other people by accident. They 
did not really intend to kill. 

With Johnny Potts it was different. He did no 
yelling. There was no expression of enjoyment on his 
face. He was a sullen, silent man, and seemed to want 
to impress the crowd with his lack of vocal expression. 
I have seen him empty his gun in the ground with no 
apparent purpose except to create the impression that 
he would just as leave shoot a man as shoot the ground 
if he had any sort of pretext for doing it. 



248 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Webster, who also worked on the T-5 range, was of 
a different type. Johnny Potts was uneducated, coarse 
in his limited speech, and with no grace of manner or 
address. Webster, on the other hand, was a man of 
considerable polish and had a fair education. He was 
a man of considerable reading, and capable of appear- 
ing in almost any kind of society. While Johnny Potto 
was rather undersized and not prepossessing in appear- 
ance, Webster was, as cowboys went, a sort of Beau 
Brummel, who liked to cast off the unlovely garments 
of the range and appear in civilized raiment, not the 
garish, loud sort some cowboys and tin horn gamblers 
delight in, but really tasty clothes, for Webster had 
taste in dress as well as in speech. It was perhaps 
natural that these two men, so different in manners and 
speech, should not love each other, and it was also 
almost inevitable that sooner or later there would be a 
quarrel to the death. 

Just what the quarrel was about I do not now recall 
if I ever knew. The story was told me by another. It 
came at breakfast time, I think, at headquarters camp. 
Both men reached for their guns apparently at the 
same instant. They were standing by the trough used 
both for watering the camp horses and for the pre- 
prandial ablutions of the men. Johnny Potts was the 
fraction of a second quicker on the draw, which seemed 
rather strange, for Webster was known as the cooler 
and quicker man. They were within a few feet of each 
other when the impromptu duel commenced. There was 
no chance to miss at that distance, even if they had 
been less skilled than they were, but the hammer of 
Potts' gun came harmlessly down on an empty or 
defective cartridge and the next instant he fell dead as 
the bullet of Webster's gun tore its way through his 
heart. 

It was many years afterward, when I happened to be 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 249 

talking of old times with the veteran ex-foreman of 
the Drum range, Jack Crewdson, and mentioned the 
fatal battle between John Potts and Webster. I re- 
marked that both men showed a lot of nerve, for there 
was every probability that both of them would die, 
shooting at that distance and both being quick on the 
draw and expert shots, and I also remarked on the luck 
of Webster. 

"It wasn't luck," said the veteran cow man slowly. 
"Potts' gun had been fixed. That was why Webster 
was slow on the draw. But you see it made a perfect 
defense in case he had been arrested, taken to Fort 
Smith, and tried for murder !" 



Captain Pamter, Detective 

A good many people in Kansas knew Captain Bob 
Painter, of Meade, as lawyer, journalist, department 
commander of the G. A. R., ranchman, and member of 
the legislature, but perhaps only a few know that he 
has a record as a detective that would do credit to a 
Burns or a Pinkerton. I am indebted for the material 
out of which this story is constructed to my old-time 
friend, Will H. Lininger, formerly of Topeka, now 
residing in Chicago, and holding the important position 
of assistant manager of the Springfield Fire & Marine 
Insurance Company. I might also say that the facts 
on which the story is founded were not published by 
Captain Bob Painter and only told by him on solicita- 
tion. 

More than a third of a century ago the First Na- 
tional Bank of Cincinnati, Ohio, one day consigned to 
the United States Express Company a package con- 
taining $10,000 in currency to be delivered to a bank 
in Van Wert, Ohio. At Greenville, Ohio, the package 



250 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

had to be transferred to another line of railroad. A 
quiet, inoffensive workingman, encumbered with a wife 
and family drawing a monthly stipend of some forty 
dollars per month, out of which munificent sum he had 
to support his family and pay for the feed of his horse, 
hauled the express packages from the car to the local 
office of the express company and from the express com- 
pany's office to the other depot. On this particular day 
this humble citizen noticed this package and seeing that 
it was from a national bank, drew the conclusion that it 
probably contained currency. In the hurry of trans- 
ferring freight and express the package was left in pos- 
session of the express messenger and carried on past the 
station. The humble citizen discovered that the pack- 
age was not in his wagon and wired the messenger, who 
found it and returned it by the next passing express 
train. 

Perhaps it was when the transfer man saw it the 
second time that the temptation came to him, and when 
you think it over it is not greatly to be wondered at 
that a man trying to support a family and a horse on 
an income of $40 a month should be tempted when a 
package of money is left in his care. So it came about 
that the humble transfer man carefully undid the 
package, abstracted the $10,000 in currency and re- 
placed it with blank paper; then he delivered the 
package to the local express office, where it was locked 
in the safe and the next morning delivered by the same 
transfer man to the express agent at Van Wert and 
thence to the bank to which it was directed. When the 
Van Wert bank opened the package and found the 
currency gone the Pinkerton detective agency was 
called in to discover the thief. The Cincinnati bank 
brought suit against the United States Express Com- 
pany and secured judgment. This put it up to the 
express company to find the party who had tampered 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 251 

with the package or stand to lose all of the $10,000. 
Suspicion rested on the express messenger who carried 
the package past the station where it should have been 
transferred, and the agent of the express company at 
Circleville. Somewhat strangely the detectives did not 
seem to suspect the humble citizen who drove the one- 
horse transfer wagon, of being the guilty man. 

The express agent was arrested, tried, and acquitted, 
but afterward dismissed, and the humble transfer man, 
who was the leading witness at the trial, was appointed 
local agent for the express company which he had 
robbed. But a guilty conscience made him uneasy. 
The currency was in bills of large denominations for 
the most part and the thief was afraid to spend it 
and no doubt afraid to keep it in his possession. After 
a few months he threw up his job and with his family 
moved to Nebraska and from there to Meade County, 
Kansas. He tried the real estate business with in- 
different success for a time, then gave it up and moved 
to a little town up in the northern part of the county 
and started a small general store. And still he was 
afraid apparently to use the money he had taken from 
the express package back in Ohio. He lived modestly, 
was known as a quiet, unassuming man, and popular 
with his frontier neighbors. 

Notwithstanding the fact that he had the money from 
the rifled express package in his possession, he bor- 
rowed money at the extortionate rates of interest 
charged in that new country, still, no doubt, filled with 
the fear that if he were to begin showing those large 
bills he would be suspected. And he had reason for 
his fear. The express company had failed to find the 
thief, but had not forgotten. The detectives were still 
tirelessly hunting for the criminal and while they did 
not believe that the quiet transfer man was the thief, 
they did suspect that he had some knowledge of the 



252 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

real criminal. So it came about that Captain Bob 
Painter was employed to help unravel the mystery. 
Captain Bob had had considerable experience with 
criminals and for some reason had a hunch that the 
quiet storekeeper was the guilty man and that the 
currency was secreted somewhere about his premises. 
He cultivated the acquaintance of the storekeeper and 
finally proposed a business partnership with him to deal 
in equities in land. 

In the eighties there was a great land and town boom 
in western Kansas. A flood of immigrants, a quarter 
of a million strong, took possession of the government 
lands clear out to the Colorado line. Loan agents came 
with the tide and practically all the lands were mort- 
gaged. Then came the reaction, the crop failures and 
drouths, and the discouraged homesteaders forsook their 
lands and left them to be taken by the mortgage com- 
panies. The result was that most of the mortgage 
companies that loaned money in western Kansas went 
broke, unable to carry the load of defaulted mortgages, 
the payment of which they had guaranteed to the 
eastern purchasers. 

Captain Bob's proposition to the storekeeper was to 
get hold of the equities in these mortgaged lands and 
sell them subject to the mortgages. Of course, the 
equities could be bought for a song, and it didn't need 
to be much of a song at that. Each of the partners 
was to put up $200 cash on a certain day, to be used 
in paying for equities which the captain was to try to 
dispose of in the East. Just what there was about the 
kind of money the storekeeper put up for his share that 
convinced Captain Bob of his guilt I do not know, 
possibly the size of the bills or the name of the national 
bank that had issued them, but in any event he wired 
the general manager of the express company that he 
had the thief located and to come and get him. 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES 253 

When they went out to make the arrest the man 
vehemently denied all knowledge of the crime, but on 
searching him they found a leather pocket book in his 
coat in which there were two $100 bills. A search of 
the house revealed nothing until Captain Bob insisted 
on investigating a stand which he found had a hollow 
leg, in which was concealed over $6,000 in bills. Fifty- 
two of these were $100 bills, the rest were bills of 
smaller denominations. Confronted with the evidence 
of his guilt the man broke down, confessed his guilt, 
and went back to Ohio to serve his sentence in the 
penitentiary. When the confession was made the man 
expressed his satisfaction. He had for years been 
carrying a load of fear and remorse. The money had 
done him no good, because he was afraid to spend it. 
It was apparently the one crime of his life and he had 
bitterly regretted it. A remarkable part of the story 
is that somehow the knowledge of their father's crime 
was kept from his children. They were given to un- 
derstand that he had been called away on some kind 
of business that kept him from home a long time. He 
was a model prisoner, served his sentence, and returned 
to his family to lead thereafter a law-abiding and quiet 
life. 



KANSAS GROWING UP 

The Coming Back of Denver Boggs 

I do not know just when the elder Boggs, yielding 
to the lure of the West, loaded his young wife and 
possibly a child or two into a wagon and trekked 
across the far reaches of gently rolling prairie land 
that lay between the Missouri River and the foothills 
of the Rockies. At any rate it was before the present 
capital of the great state of Colorado had been laid 
out in that great cup in the mountains and men were 
sluicing the sands of Cherry Creek for gold. 

Here on the site of the future city, the Boggs family 
located and here a year or so afterward a boy was 
born, the first white baby born on the townsite. In 
honor of the event his parents named him Denver. 

The man born amid the glory and grandeur of the 
mountains does not often stray to the plains and for 
that reason it was somewhat remarkable that when 
Denver Boggs had reached years of maturity he came 
back and settled in Kansas. I first met him in the 
Medicine country, a mild, good natured, quiet man, 
who had managed to accumulate a wife and numerous 
children and very little else. He and his wife were 
uncomplaining souls and seemed to be reasonably cheer- 
ful, although there must have been times when there 
was little on the table and no reserve in the larder. 

Denver had managed somehow to acquire a fair edu- 
cation. His speech was unusually accurate and un- 
seasoned with profanity, which I may say in passing 

254 



KANSAS GROWING UP 255 

was somewhat rare among the men of that locality at 
that time. I do not think he drank or used tobacco and 
so far as speech and general conduct were concerned he 
was really a model citizen. He worked at such jobs 
as offered, sometimes riding the range and sometimes 
working about the little frontier town, doing odd jobs. 
Occasionally he canvassed for subscribers for the local 
paper after it was started and sometimes furnished 
a column of country correspondence, for he had some 
facility as a writer. 

The only criticism I ever heard of him was that he 
lacked force and ambition. He seemed to have a fair 
equipment of brains, but apparently was content to live 
a hand-to-mouth existence, letting the morrow take care 
of itself. 

It was, therefore, with some surprise that along in 
the later nineties I heard that Denver Boggs had blos- 
somed out as a cattleman and according to report was 
succeeding. It was in the time when there was a great 
boom in the cattle business, especially in the business 
of raising cattle on the range. The long depression in 
prices of beef cattle was succeeded by a brisk demand 
and constantly rising prices. Money to invest in cattle 
was easy to obtain. Commission firms seemed willing 
to stake almost any man who was ready to promise 
them big dividends on their investment. As a result of 
this condition there was witnessed the astounding and 
most spectacular career of Grant Gillette, known for a 
time as the "cowboy cattle king." Starting with no 
capital, in an amazingly short while he had managed to 
borrow more than $2,000,000 and had herds scattered 
from the Red River in Texas to the Nebraska line. 
At one time he traveled about accompanied by his 
famous cowboy band, numbering perhaps twenty-five 
or thirty musicians who did nothing but furnish en- 
tertainment and advertise their employer. 



256 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

But the rise and fall of Grant Gillette is enough ma- 
terial for another story. 

Denver Boggs was not so spectacular, but something 
had stirred his ambition; opportunity was at his door 
and he mounted and rode. Most men and women like 
to live up to their reputation. With seeming pros- 
perity, Denver Boggs and family were no longer con- 
tent with the old simplicity of dress and economy of 
household management. There was a temptation to live 
beyond his means and to it Denver yielded. He sold 
the cattle or part of them which were mortgaged to 
secure his indebtedness. Perhaps if he had frankly 
stated the case to his creditors, he might have made 
arrangements to pay out when he could, but he made 
the fatal mistake of concealment until he could see no 
way out and the doors of the penitentiary opening 
before him. Then he fled. It was a good many months 
before any news came from the fugitive. 

He made his way to Cuba ; then across the gulf to 
Mexico. All the time his conscience was goading him 
and he was weighed down by an almost intolerable 
burden of homesickness and longing to get back and 
have it all over with. Denver Boggs was not a criminal 
at heart ; he was in fact a kindly man who had yielded 
to temptation and was paying a fearful penalty. The 
day came when he could stand the strain no longer and 
crossing the bridge which separates El Paso from the 
old Mexican town of Juarez, he hunted up the Texas 
sheriff and told him that he was wanted up in Kansas 
and had come in to surrender. The sheriff was some- 
what surprised and after looking through all of his lists 
of men wanted could find no mention of a man by the 
name or fitting the description of Denver Boggs. But 
the man was insistent and so the sheriff to accommodate 
him wired the Kansas authorities that he had a man 
there who insisted that he had committed a crime and 



KANSAS GROWING UP 257 

wanted to go to the penitentiary. The Kansas sheriff 
wired that the story of the wanderer was true ; and 
so without guard and gladly, Denver came back to 
Kansas and surrendered himself to the officers of the 
law. All he asked was to have the matter over with 
as soon as possible so that he might begin serving 
his sentence, with the hope when he had paid the penalty 
he might be given a chance to reinstate himself in the 
opinion of Iris old neighbors. 

The court heard the story and declaring that in his 
opinion Denver had already been punished sufficiently 
for his fault, gave him the lowest sentence permissible 
under the law, one year in the penitentiary. That was 
in the days before the indeterminate sentence or the 
power of the judge to grant a parole. In the peni- 
tentiary he was a model prisoner and was given all 
the good time possible on a sentence of that duration. 
At the end of the eleventh month Denver Boggs stepped 
forth a free man. 

During his wanderings he had traveled through the 
then territory of Arizona and perhaps by reason of 
the environment of his boyhood, was something of a 
mineralogist. As he traveled he observed and marked 
the location of rich copper deposits. When he had fin- 
ished his term in the penitentiary he went back to 
Arizona and found that the properties he had noted 
were still open to entry. He located a number of 
claims and then got in touch with some men of means 
who were looking for mining investments. 

Denver Boggs was not a success as a cattle man but 
he was a pleasing conversationalist and persuaded these 
capitalists to send their hired experts to look at his 
claims. 

As a result he sold them an interest for $125,000 
cash. 

Let it be said to his credit that one of his first acts 



258 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

was to square up with his creditors, who had long 
before marked off the Boggs cattle account as uncol- 
lectible. 

It has been a good many years since I last heard 
from Denver Boggs. I have always regarded his case 
as a remarkable instance of a man coming back out of 
the depths and beginning his real success in life after 
serving a term in the penitentiary. I hope that suc- 
cess has followed him, because, notwithstanding his one 
grave mistake, he was a good man. 



When Bill Backslid 

Among the cowboys who ranged from Dodge City to 
the Panhandle of Texas was one whose baptismal name 
as I recall was William Patrick Hogan. But on ac- 
count of an adventure he had had with a prairie rat- 
tler, which, according to William and his contempo- 
raries, would have resulted in his premature demise if 
it had not been for the prompt administration of 
snakebite remedy in copious quantities, he was generally 
known on the range as "Rattlesnake Bill." 

If the modern descriptive adjective, "hard boiled," 
had been invented at that time, it would have fitted 
"Rattlesnake Bill" to a dot. When he was "lit up," 
as the slangful phrase had it, he was something of a 
holy terror, and even when sober was not particularly 
averse to trouble, either with gun or fist or quirt, al- 
though it should be said to his credit that he never 
craved the reputation of being a "gunman." His natu- 
ral inclination, after the manner of his race, was to 
settle arguments with the two hands furnished by na- 
ture, and if he had lived in the land and time of his 
forebears he would have been a leader with the black- 
thorn and engaged joyously in breaking the heads of 



KANSAS GROWING UI* 259 

his opponents. It must be confessed here that religion 
did not have much of a foothold on the range. A 
preacher was likely to be looked upon by the herders 
as rather an effeminate individual, who might do all 
right to talk to women's aid societies, but who lacked 
the virility admired by the men who rode through the 
silent watches of the night, or at breakneck speed 
through the storm with the stampeded herd, risking 
death every moment. It was, therefore, an amazing 
thing when "Rattlesnake Bill" happened to come under 
the spell of a traveling evangelist and became a humble 
suppliant at the mercy seat. 

And it should be said for Bill that he took his 
religion seriously. He felt that he ought to do some- 
thing to make up for the years he had wasted in the 
service of Satan while ambling down the broad road 
which led to destruction. It occurred to him that he 
might and should become a living example of the power 
of grace, and show to the unregenerate cowboys that 
he could demonstrate the long suffering patience of 
the Nazarene. 

The other herders were, therefore, considerably sur- 
prised when they learned that "Rattlesnake Bill" had 
not only got religion, but that on a certain evening he 
proposed to make a talk to his unregenerate fellow 
cowpunchers and show them that he had so completely 
changed that they could heap upon him any indignity 
without causing anger or resentment on his part. The 
herders discussed the matter among themselves with 
varying opinions. Some of them said that they be- 
lieved Bill was really in earnest, while others con- 
tended that he must have been eating loco and had bats 
in his garret as a result. It was generally conceded, 
however, that it would be a good idea to go and hear 
what Bill had to say and likewise to give him a tryout. 
So it happened that there was a rather large and in- 



260 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

terested crowd present on the evening when the new 
convert proposed to give an exhibition of the genuine- 
ness of his conversion. 

His opening statement was somewhat crude but easily 
understood. In substance he said : "You range riders 
and mule skinners hev knowed me for several years. 
You all know that I never took no stock in no kind of 
religion and if there was any kind of general ornery- 
ness that I hain't indulged in I can't call it to mind, 
and at that I ain't no worse than a lot of you geezers. 
What I'm aimin' at is to show you birds that a man 
who is genuinely converted can stand the gaff and not 
let his temper rise. Now I propose to demonstrate to 
you unregenerate cusses that you can heap any sort 
of insults and abuse on me and I won't resent it. Go 
to it." 

They took him at his word. Some of them, indeed, 
had come prepared to make it interesting for Bill if he 
really meant it. "Arkansas Pete," who had suffered at 
the hands of "Rattlesnake Bill" in a fistic argument, 
saw an, opportunity to play even and landed a kick on 
Bill's person that almost made his teeth rattle. For 
an instant there was a dangerous expression on Bill's 
countenance, but he made no attempt to resent the 
indignity. "Texas Sam" took from his cheek a well- 
chewed quid of longgreen tobacco and snapped it 
against the bronzed cheek of the amateur evangelist 
and demonstrator of Christian forbearance. "Sour 
Dough Jake," the cook, who had been the butt of a good 
many jibes from Bill in his unregenerate days, plastered 
his head with a batch of spoiled dough, and "Bitter 
Creek Slim" tried him out with a vigorous application 
of the quirt on an unprotected part of his person. 
"Rattlesnake Bill" winced a trifle under the punishment, 
but made no complaint and gave no indication of anger. 
It was at this point that Ike Timberlake, from the 



KANSAS GROWING UP 261 

Brazos country, commonly known on the ranges as 
"Alkali Ike," took from his side pocket a turkey egg in 
an advanced state of decomposition and, with well- 
directed aim, hurled it at Bill's head. The new convert 
was just opening his mouth to assure the audience he 
was unmoved by their treatment, when the wild turkey 
egg of advanced age and powerful vintage hit him fair 
and square in the face. It broke with a loud sound 
and a considerable part of the contents of the shell 
went between his teeth. He gagged, spat out the putrid 
egg with great promptness and considerable violence, 
wiped the loud smelling mess from his countenance, and 
then made the following announcement, as he shed his 
coat preparatory to going into action : "Gents, I don't 
intend to give up permanently this here Christian life, 
but there will be an adjournment for fifteen minutes 
of this here exhibition of long-sufferin' meekness and 
patience while I whip the low-down, measly, sheep- 
stealin' son of a coyote who throwed that turkey egg" 
Those who witnessed the fight declared that "Rattle- 
snake Bill" was never in better form, and when the bat- 
tle ended, "Alkali Ike" was a wreck, while "Arkansas 
Pete," "Texas Sam," "Sour Dough Jake" and "Bitter 
Creek Slim" had fled from the wrath to come. 



The Rise and Fall of Grant Gillette 

About thirty years ago a young telegraph operator 
out in Marion County was accused of putting up a job 
to defraud the railroad company, which seems so simple 
in its conception that one marvels that it should have 
worked, even for a limited period. The scheme was to 
put a few bushels of grain in a freight car, bill it out 
as a full car and collect from the railroad company 
on the basis of the full car-load. 



262 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Naturally, as might be supposed, the young man got 
into trouble and left that section of the country for a 
year or two. He seems to have been able to satisfy the 
railroad company in some way, however, and was never 
prosecuted. 

It was a year or two after that, that this same 
young man sought the job of deputy sheriff in Dickin- 
son County. The emoluments of this office at that 
time amounted to some fifty dollars per month. He 
did not get the job. 

Possibly the necessity for making a living suggested 
to him that there ought to be some shorter road to 
fortune than working as an underling at the modest 
stipend of fifty per month. At any rate, there seemed 
to be a change come over the spirit of his dreams. He 
evidently decided that the world was his oyster and 
he proposed to open it. 

The young man was Grant Gillette, of Woodbine, 
who within the next four or five years furnished the 
most spectacular example of frenzied finance ever seen 
in the Middle West. 

Within these few brief years this young man, still 
under thirty years of age, with little business experi- 
ence and only local acquaintance, bought herds of cat- 
tle from Texas to the Canadian line, and from the 
Pacific coast to the Missouri River, all on borrowed 
money, advanced by experienced bankers and commis- 
sion men, and even by the great leader of the packing 
industry, Philip D. Armour. 

When the crash finally came his indebtedness had 
mounted to the dizzy height of $2,000,000, or some- 
where in that neighborhood. The men who had ad- 
vanced the money were holding chattel mortgages on 
herds, as they supposed, aggregating 60,000 cattle, 
of all grades from long horned Texans, to the highest 
grade Herefords. His methods were bizarre and, it 



KANSAS GROWING UP 263 

would have seemed, not calculated to appeal to a care- 
ful, hard-headed business man, but the astonishing fact 
was that somehow he did appeal to them, so that they 
advanced large sums of money on his unsupported 
promise and even seemed eager to do it. On one occa- 
sion he stepped into a commission house in St. Joseph 
and nonchalantly asked the broker to cash his check 
for $10,000, saying that he would have a few car- 
loads of cattle on the market within a week and would 
then settle. The commission house promptly cashed 
the check which they were still holding after the crash 
came. 

Possibly there was an element of greed in the case, 
for Gillette promised his backers large profits on their 
investments. It is probable also that his breezy con- 
fidence impressed these men, for in the heyday of his 
career Grant Gillette was the personification of con- 
fidence in his own ability. True, there was much of the 
grand stand in his methods. He hired and uniformed 
a large band, known all over the country as Gillette's 
cowboy band. This band he carried about on special 
trains to cattle conventions and other gatherings. He 
rejoiced in the title of the cattle king of Kansas. His 
shirt front and fingers were decorated with large and 
glittering diamonds and he had a peculiar habit of 
carrying a handful of diamonds in his pocket which 
he would carelessly jingle in his hand when engaged 
in conversation. 

He cherished political ambitions and was talked of 
as a candidate for the Legislature and even Congress. 

The crash came in 1898 when some bank or commis- 
sion house began to get uneasy about its paper, and 
then it developed that Gillette's creditors did not know 
within $1,000,000 how much money had been advanced 
to the young Napoleon of finance. 

On November 27, 1898, the following telegram was 



264 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

received at Woodbine, "Will leave today for Spain. 
Cable me at Cadiz, how are my wife and baby." How- 
ever, he was not sailing for Spain but was heading 
for old Mexico. 

It was three years afterward that a Kansan re- 
turning from Mexico brought the news that he had met 
Grant Gillette in the city of Chihuahua, where he was 
living in a state of poverty. His baby had died. His 
wife had been taken down with the smallpox and Grant 
himself had nearly died from accidental poisoning. He 
had been running a dairy, but had lost that when sick- 
ness came on, and was then earning a somewhat precari- 
ous living by making and selling shirtwaists to the Mexi- 
can maidens. However, Gillette was not the kind of 
a man to get discouraged by fickle fortune. Five years 
after he had disappeared, leaving his creditors to gather 
up what they could, he returned to the United States. 

He called some of his creditors and informed thenl 
that he had procured a large interest in a valuable 
mine and wanted them to take stock in the same to 
the extent at least of his obligations to them, and per- 
haps some more to finance the proposition. How many 
of them took stock I do not know, but at any rate all 
talk of prosecution of the erstwhile cattle king was 
dropped and my last word concerning his whereabouts 
was that he was living quietly near Fostoria, Ohio, 
was accumulating land, and was on the road to for- 
tune. 

Having seen and having tried to study the character 
of Grant Gillette, I have often wondered how he was 
able to go as far as he did. I have often wondered 
how a man like .him could so impress a man like P. D. 
Armour, who had the reputation of being an excellent 
judge of human nature, that he would back the specu- 
lations of the young adventurer to the extent of thou- 
sands of dollars. 



KANSAS GROWING UP 265 

Possibly the explanation may be that of the western 
man who loved to sit in a poker game, who declared 
that a bob-tailed flush was just as good as the real 
thing if you only had the nerve to bet it high enough, 
and at the same time look as if you really held the 
cards. 

Convicted under His Own Law 

One of the members of the first Oklahoma territorial 
legislature was Ira N. Terrill, who had gone into the 
new territory with the first spectacular run and driven 
his stake in a choice quarter section of virgin Okla- 
homa land. If it had not been for the fact that an- 
other man also decided that he wanted this particular 
quarter section of land this story would never have 
been written, with its intermingling of comedy and 
tragedy. As a legislator Terrill determined to leave 
his impress on the laws of the new territory and future 
commonwealth. He introduced and successfully urged 
for passage a law providing for capital punishment by 
hanging for first degree murder, treason, and possibly 
some other offenses. 

The session had not much more than adjourned, 
however, when the quarrel between Terrill and the man 
who was contesting his right to the claim, culminated 
in a shooting. Perhaps Terrill took the advantage; 
perhaps he was simply the better marksman, or maybe 
he got his gun out first. Anyway, the other man was 
dead and Ira N. Terrill was arrested charged with mur- 
der. It seemed a queer irony of fate that he was the first 
man charged with murder and tried under the provisions 
of the bill he had introduced and caused to become a 
law. He was convicted of murder in the second degree 
on September 26, 1892, and as the territory of Okla- 
homa had no penitentiary, he was sent to the Kansas 



266 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

penitentiary under an arrangement made with the Kan- 
sas governor and warden, by which the state was paid 
so much per prisoner by the territory. 

Terrill had made some study of law before his con- 
viction and was a zealous student of jurisprudence dur- 
ing the period of his incarceration. Acting as his own 
lawyer, he brought a habeas corpus proceeding in the 
supreme court of Kansas, demanding his release on 
the ground that the court which convicted him in 
Payne County, Oklahoma, was without jurisdiction, 
because the term of court had lapsed by the failure of 
the judge to put in an appearance within the time 
fixed by statute. The supreme court held that he was 
right in his contention, granted the writ, and ordered 
him released from the penitentiary, but did not dis- 
charge him entirely. He was ordered to be delivered 
to the sheriff of Payne County for such further pro- 
ceedings as the prosecuting officer of that county might 
desire. The result was a new indictment, a new trial, 
and another conviction, but this time for first degree 
manslaughter. He was then sentenced to twelve years 
in the penitentiary and again lodged in the Kansas 
penitentiary. 

Again Terrill applied for a writ of habeas corpus on 
the ground that the killing for which he had been tried 
and convicted had taken place on a government reserva- 
tion (the shooting occurred in Guthrie on the govern- 
ment acre reserved for the United States land office). 
The supreme court this time ruled against Terrill, hold- 
ing that the question as to where the killing had taken 
place was one of fact and if an error of jurisdiction 
had occurred it could only be taken advantage of on 
appeal. 

Having failed on this Terrill proceeded on a new 
theory, that no authority existed for holding in Kan- 
sas a man whose liberty was restrained by an Oklahoma 



KANSAS GROWING UP 267 

court and that there was no law in Kansas which justi- 
fied or attempted to justify such detention. Acting 
on this theory, all the time he was in the penitentiary 
he was in a state of chronic insurrection, refusing to 
work and even resisting the officer when that gentleman 
undertook to compel him to toil. 

In the early part of 1903 he again succeeded in get- 
ting the attention of the supreme court with another 
application for a writ of habeas corpus, based on the 
ground above stated. The court refused to grant the 
writ on the ground that the state of Kansas by per- 
mitting the warden of the penitentiary to enter into 
this contract with the territory of Oklahoma to care 
for the convicts had recognized the validity of the 
contract although it was not authorized by any act 
of the legislature. Two members of the court dis- 
sented from this decision. This ended the incursions 
of Terrill into the courts and he sullenly served out 
the rest of his term. 

At the time of his third application for a writ of 
habeas corpus, I had written a story about him in 
which I stated that he was the first victim of his own 
law and that he had been convicted of murder in the 
first degree and sentenced to be hanged. This was a 
mistake on my part, but was innocently made and then 
it furnished the material for a better human interest 
story. 

A short time after he had obtained his liberty I was 
surprised to receive a visit from the noted ex-convict, 
who had somehow obtained a paper containing the story 
I had written. He had this with him and proceeded 
without much preliminary statement to inform me that 
I had libeled him and that his reputation and feelings 
were lacerated to the extent that it would require 
$10,000 to heal the wounds. In support of his demand, 
he called attention to the fact that he had not been 



268 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

convicted of first degree murder or sentenced to be 
hanged. 

I countered first by deploring the fact that I lacked 
something like $9,998.50 of having the $10,000 about 
my person, then proceeded to argue that, granting 
what he said to be true about the convictions in court, 
he really had no ground for complaint ; that having 
been twice sentenced to imprisonment, once for life and 
once for twelve years, the sum total was really worse 
than only being sentenced to hang once. I argued with 
considerable earnestness that to be sentenced to serve 
at hard labor in the penitentiary after a man was dead 
was a punishment more to be dreaded than the brief 
inconvenience of hanging, which would be over with in 
less than sixty seconds. I also urged that to have been 
sentenced to be hung gave him a prominence he never 
could achieve by mere confinement in the penitentiary. 
Not many men have been sentenced to be hung and 
escaped, but millions of men have spent more or less 
of their lives in penitentiaries. 

I must say, however, he did not seem to be much 
impressed with my argument and insisted that it was 
either a financial settlement or a suit for libel. He 
also included Senator Capper in his suit and made the 
same demand on him, but Mr. Capper mildly but rather 
firmly declined to dig up and the suit was brought. As 
this was the only time that any one ever considered 
it worth while to make me a defendant in a $10,000 
libel suit I was somewhat puffed up about it and in- 
terested in the outcome. 

The case came on to be heard before the late Judge 
A. W. Dana. The defendants were represented by ex- 
Lieutenant Governor Troutman, while Ira N. Terrill 
was his own lawyer. When the jury had been duly im- 
paneled and sworn, there commenced perhaps the most 
peculiar trial ever seen in a Kansas court. 



KANSAS GROWING UP 269 

Terrill acted in a double capacity of lawyer and 
witness and with meticulous care maintained the dis- 
tinction between attorney and client and attorney and 
witness. He announced to the court in an apparently 
wholly impersonal way: "Ira N. Terrill will now be 
sworn." 

"Mr. Terrill will take the witness stand." 

He then gravely asked, "Please state your name, age, 
and residence to the court and jury." 

Having asked the question, he stepped up on the 
little platform, seated himself in the witness chair, and 
proceeded to answer the questions. He then stepped 
down and, again assuming the role of attorney, asked, 
"Are you the plaintiff in this case?" then took the wit- 
ness chair and answered the question. 

"Have you, Mr. Terrill, in your possession a copy 

of the Farmers' Mail and Breeze of date owned 

by one of .these defendants and edited by the other?" 

Again seating himself as a witness he answered, "I 
have." 

Then assuming again the position of attorney for the 
plaintiff he announced, "We now wish to introduce this 
paper containing the libelous article, in evidence and 
mark it 'Exhibit A.' " 

This proceeded through the trial of the case, the 
prosecutor alternating between the witness stand and 
the floor. The judge with great dignity and self- 
restraint preserved decorum in the court, although one 
fat juryman, in his efforts at self- repression, showed 
evidences of pain and indications of apoplexy. 

I may say in conclusion that the jury very kindly 
refused to find for the plaintiff, which relieved both 
Mr. Capper and the writer from financial loss and as 
Terrill had filed, as I recall, a poverty affidavit when he 
started the suit and as his only witness was himself 
it was inexpensive, if fruitless, legal action. 



270 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

What has become of this picturesque and peculiar 
character I do not know. For a few years after his 
release from the penitentiary I heard occasionally of 
his bringing suits for damages against various officials 
in Oklahoma and Kansas, but think they all ended about 
as did the one described. So far as I know, however, 
he holds the record for at least two things : he is the 
only man in the United States convicted of a capital 
offense under a criminal statute of which he was the 
author and also the only man who, while in the peni- 
tentiary, acting as his own lawyer, brought three 
habeas corpus proceedings before the supreme court of 
a state. 

The Last Raid of the Daltons 

One day in the late summer of the year 1907 I was 
taking a plain and not very satisfactory meal in a 
Topeka restaurant when there came in and sat down at 
the table with me a tall, well built, and rather strikingly 
handsome man. His face had that peculiar pallor that 
comes from long confinement within prison walls and 
I noticed that he seemed to have little use of one of 
his arms. A well known Topeka physician accompanied 
him and introduced him as Emmett Dalton, the only 
survivor of one of the bloodiest bandit battles that ever 
took place on the Kansas border. 

For fifteen years Emmett Dalton had been an in- 
mate of the Kansas penitentiary under sentence of 
death, for in those days Kansas had a peculiar law 
under which a man might be convicted of murder in 
the first degree, in which case it became the duty of 
the judge presiding at the trial to sentence him to be 
hanged by the neck until dead, but with the proviso 
that the sentence of death should not be carried into 
effect until after the condemned had been confined for 



KANSAS GROWING UP 271 

one year in the Kansas penitentiary and then only on 
order of the governor. As no governor cared to take 
the responsibility of ordering a wholesale execution, the 
number of men convicted of first degree murder in- 
creased until at one time there were about one hundred 
in the Kansas penitentiary, with sentence of death hang- 
ing over them awaiting the order for their execution. 

Of these the one who excited the greatest interest 
among the visitors to the penitentiary and the most 
striking figure among the more than one thousand con- 
victs (for at that time Kansas was taking care of con- 
victs from the territory of Oklahoma), was the young 
man Emmett Dalton. 

Among the boldest of the deputy United States 
marshals who preserved a semblance of order and law 
in the wild land known as the Indian Territory during 
the latter half of the last century was Bob Dalton. 
Fearless to the point of recklessness, deadly in his aim, 
and quicker to draw than most gunmen, he possessed 
to a very considerable extent the confidence of the 
department of justice at Washington, until it was dis- 
covered that he was selling protection to outlaws. 
Confronted with the evidence, he excused his action by 
claiming that the Government owed him a considerable 
sum for his services as deputy marshal, which he had 
not been able to get on account of the red tape con- 
nected with Government dealings, and he was just get- 
ting even. He was not punished further than being dis- 
missed from the service. His deals with the outlaws 
showed the criminal bent of his mind and shortly after 
he determined to cut loose from all restraints of law and 
become a leader of a bandit band. 

It must be said for Bob Dalton that he had the 
qualities of leadership which made him a most dan- 
gerous outlaw. Nature had dowered him with a more 
than ordinarily keen, though crooked brain. His fol- 



272 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

lowers feared but also loved him, for he was generous 
as well as bold. They were ready to follow him into 
any danger even against their better judgment, and 
die with him if that was to be the fortune of the fight. 
For some months after the organization of his band 
he had uninterrupted success. There were train rob- 
beries as bold and spectacular as were ever undertaken 
by the James and Younger gangs, and the name of 
Dalton became notorious in the annals of border out- 
lawry. 

One mild October day — October 4, 1892, to be exact 
— Bob Dalton gathered his band together and outlined 
his plans for a raid on the banks of the town of Coffey- 
ville. With him were his two younger brothers, Grattin 
and Emmett, then a boy of barely nineteen, Bill Powers, 
and Dick Broadwell. Broadwell was the son of Major 
Broadwell, whose cattle ranged in the Medicine country. 
I had seen the boy Dick often. He had always seemed 
to me to be a rather overgrown, awkward, good-natured 
youth, not naturally a tough, but of that impression- 
able nature which would be influenced and greatly at- 
tracted by a man like Bob Dalton. So, with visions of 
adventure and riches easily obtained, young Broadwell 
had joined the gang and afterward, as this story will 
show, paid for his folly with his life. 

To his companions Bob Dalton told of the large ac- 
cumulation of cash in the Coffeyville banks, the Condon 
and the First National. They were to ride boldly into 
town. Two of them, Bob and Emmett Dalton, were to 
hold up the First National, while Grat Dalton, Bill 
Powers, and Dick Broadwell were to loot the Condon 
bank. Some of the members of the gang objected. 
They said that Coffeyville was a town in which many 
men were accustomed to carry arms. The Daltons, 
too, had lived in Coffeyville and were known to many 
Coffeyville people. The risk seemed too great. The 



KANSAS GROWING UP 273 

bandit leader listened to the objections and then told 
them that he had determined on the raid. He was 
going to pull off a bank robbery more sensational than 
any the James boys or the Youngers had undertaken 
and would carry away a bigger loot. If any of them 
did not dare to go with him it was because he was a 
coward. That settled it. His was the dominating 
mind and none of them would acknowledge to Bob Dal- 
ton that they were cowards. To Emmett, the boy, his 
brother Bob was a demigod. He had been the hero 
of his boyhood and was still his hero, whom he was 
willing to follow anywhere and for whom he was willing, 
if necessary, to die. 

A few minutes after the opening of the banks on 
October 5, Grat Dalton, Bill Powers, and Dick Broad- 
well dismounted in front of the Condon bank and en- 
tered. A moment afterward the cashier and his as- 
sistant were facing the revolvers of the bandits. The 
cashier was ordered to open the safe, but replied that 
it was a time lock and he could not open it. "How soon 
will it be open?" asked Grat Dalton. "In ten minutes," 
answered the cashier. "We will wait," coolly announced 
Dalton. 

That ten minutes was a fateful period of time. 
Had the bandits been content to have taken what cash 
there was in sight, they might have escaped, but during 
the wait the citizens became aware of what was going 
on. Resolute men began to get their guns and the 
battle opened. It was short but bloody. When it 
ended the city marshal, Connelly, and three other 
citizens, L. M. Baldwin, C. J. Brown and Thomas G. 
Ayers, and four of the bandits, Bob Dalton, Grattin 
Dalton, Bill Powers, and Dick Broadwell were either 
dead or dying and Emmett Dalton, his shoulder shat- 
tered by a Winchester bullet and his back torn by a 
load of buckshot, was supposed to be mortally wounded. 



274 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Bob Dalton, cool and desperate to the last and deadly 
in his aim, was responsible for the death of most of 
the citizens. 

In an alley afterward known as "bloody alley" the 
bandits went to death as they were attempting to 
escape. Emmett might have escaped with the wound 
in his shoulder but his love for his brother and boy- 
hood hero was stronger than his love of life, so he 
turned back amid a hail of bullets to try to rescue 
Bob. With one arm disabled he tried to raise the dy- 
ing bandit from the ground. "It is no use. I am done 
for. Save yourself if you can," gasped the leader, 
and Emmett reluctantly mounted to ride away when 
he received a charge of shot in his back and fell from 
his horse, as it was supposed mortally wounded. 

Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would not have 
survived the wounds inflicted on Emmett Dalton, but 
he was not an ordinary man. The doctor who looked 
him over and dressed his wounds pronounced him the 
finest specimen of physical manhood he had ever seen, 
but at that gave no hope of his recovery. There was 
talk among the indignant citizens of lynching the boy, 
but the majority did not favor the idea of hanging 
a man who was supposed to be dying. So Emmett 
Dalton lived. For weeks he hovered between life and 
death. It was just touch and go whether he lived or 
died, but his magnificent strength triumphed. When 
he was convalescent he was taken before the court, plead 
guilty, and was sentenced to be hanged under the pro- 
visions of the peculiar Kansas law. 

Wardens generally had little complaint of his con- 
duct as a prisoner. He learned the trade of a tailor and 
became something of an expert. But the desperate 
wounds he had received never entirely healed, and after 
a time began to grow worse instead of better, until 
finally the prison physician declared that there must 
either be an operation or Dalton would lose his arm. 



KANSAS GROWING UP 275 

Governor Hoch, acting on the recommendation of 
the prison doctor, granted the ex-bandit a parole for 
four months in order that he might go where he could 
have proper surgical treatment. He had come to 
Topeka for that purpose and it was then I met him. 
Whatever may have been in the heart of the man, he 
was outwardly frank and attractive. He perhaps did 
not have great educational advantages, but he talked 
well and frankly. He insisted that he had killed no 
one that terrible day in Coffeyville, but made no com- 
plaint about his conviction. "I was guilty," he said 
frankly, "because I was with the crowd that planned 
the crime and murdered the citizens. I was with the 
gang because I loved my brother Bob. Whatever he 
may have been, however much of a criminal, he was good 
to me and I loved him. I might have gotten away, I 
think, but I could not bear the thought of leaving him 
there weltering in his blood, and so I rode back and 
tried to save him. It seemed to me that the air was 
full of bullets and I cannot understand how I escaped 
with my life. I guess it was a good thing that I was 
shot and sent to prison, for I have learned a lesson, and 
that is that crime does not pay. My family are not 
all criminals. I have brothers who are law-abiding and 
successful business men, and the law that I and my 
other brothers were violating protects the lives and 
property of these law-abiding brothers of mine. I 
want to get a pardon and go out a free man to show 
the world that I can make good." 

Emmett's mother, a sweet-faced, white-haired old 
lady of three score and ten, had during all the years her 
youngest born was in prison, worked unceasingly for 
his release. His conduct during the time of his parole 
helped and at the end of it Governor Hoch granted 
him a full and unconditional pardon, incurring by his 
act a good deal of criticism, especially from the people 
of Coffeyville, many of whom still had a vivid recollec- 



276 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

tion of the tragedy of the fifteen years before. Per- 
sonally I have never blamed the governor. Had I been 
in his place I think I would have pardoned the ex- 
bandit, for I believed in his avowal that he intended 
to make good. 

A short time after his release Dalton married the 
widow of a bank robber who was killed by an officer 
who was attempting his arrest. Not long after he 
undertook a reproduction of the crimes of the Daltons 
for moving picture purposes. He offered as an excuse 
for this that it would furnish an object lesson to warn 
young men against engaging in crime, but the general 
sentiment was that it was an attempt to capitalize his 
crimes and make of himself a movie hero. 

Then came rumors of disgraceful domestic brawls, 
of dissipation and disreputable episodes. How much 
truth there was in these rumors I cannot say. They 
may have been very much exaggerated, for it is true 
now as always that the way of the transgressor is hard 
and the man who has spent years within prison walls 
as a convict, walks ever after in the shadow of his 
crime with suspicion dogging his footsteps. 



Chester I. Long 

Along in the middle eighties a young man, who had 
finished his law course, largely under the tutelage of 
George R. Peck, hung out his shingle in Medicine 
Lodge. In his youth he was a teacher of elocution, but 
had long since lived that down. His library at first, 
as I recall, consisted of a copy of the revised statutes 
of 1868, two volumes of Blackstone, and a few other 
textbooks, while the rest of the space in the book- 
case was mostly taken up with agricultural reports 
and other light literature. Chester I. Long was a good 



KANSAS GROWING UP 277 

student and hard worker and soon began to get his 
share of such law business as there was in a frontier 
town like Medicine Lodge. This story, however, has 
to do with his political rather than his business career. 

His first serious attempt to break into politics was 
in the year 1889. Senator F. C. Price had resigned his 
place in the state Senate to take the judgeship of the 
newly created judicial district. The senatorial district 
consisted of the counties of Harper, Barber, Comanche, 
Clark, and Meade. There were three candidates to fill 
the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator 
Price, George Finch, of Harper, Chester I. Long, of 
Medicine Lodge, and George Willis Emerson, banker? 
novelist and promoter, of Meade. 

Finch had opposition in his own county but had 
enough delegates to control the county convention and 
selected the delegates to the senatorial convention. 
He made the mistake of naming his leading opponents 
as members of his delegation to the Coldwater conven- 
tion. They intended to stay with him only so long 
as there was no danger that he would be nominated, 
which I may remark in passing is not a good kind of 
delegate to have, so far as the candidate is concerned. 
None of the three candidates had enough votes to nom- 
inate, but after a considerable amount of balloting 
enough of the supporters of Emerson were ready to 
leave him and go to Finch to nominate him, provided 
all of his own delegates would stand hitched. Immedi- 
ately a part of the Harper delegates forsook their 
own candidate, voted for Long and nominated him. 

A year later the nomination would have been an 
empty honor, for the Populist wave swept the district, 
but the wave had not started to roll yet when the elec- 
tion to fill the vacancy was held and Mr. Long was 
triumphantly elected. In that way he became a mem- 
ber of the hold-over Republican Senate which tried the 



278 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

impeachment case of Judge Theodocius Botkin, who 
had been impeached by the Populist house elected in 
1890. The triumphant election of Jerry Simpson in 
1890 had a tendency to discourage Republicans in 
that district who had ambitions to go to Congress, so 
that when it became known that Senator Long was 
willing to offer himself a living sacrifice in 1892, he had 
no particular trouble in getting the nomination. He 
made a strenuous campaign, and apparently a reason- 
ably effective one, as he managed to reduce the Populist 
majority of more than 8,000 in 1890, to less than 3,000 
in 1892. 

Long was a tireless worker and developed into an 
effective campaign speaker, but some of the arts of the 
politician he never learned. Cordial to those with 
whom he was acquainted, he never really developed that 
peculiar ability to mingle with the promiscuous crowd 
and appear to be nearly tickled to death to see and 
shake hands with people he had never met before. 
He tried to do it, but somehow or other there were a 
lot of the people he shook hands with who never seemed 
to be satisfied that he meant it. He was a man who 
never used tobacco or intoxicating liquor in any form 
at that time and I think has never acquired the habit 
since. Some of his supporters during his first cam- 
paign made him believe that passing the cigars was 
necessary and he fell for it. He knew nothing what- 
ever about a cigar. All looked alike to him. Simon 
Lebrecht, the Hebrew merchant, of Medicine Lodge, 
had somewhere gotten hold of a large quantity of cigars, 
I think possibly at auction. In those days I used to 
smoke and tried one of these cigars. That satisfied 
me fully. I never had either desire or curiosity to try 
another. 

I do not know who helped put up that job on Chester 
I. Long, who was persuaded to believe that these 



KANSAS GROWING UP 279 

Lebrecht cigars were really a choice article and bought 
several boxes for campaign purposes. Campaign cigars 
at best are bad, but these were the limit. They might 
have been made useful in curing young boys who had 
an ambition to learn to smoke. If one of them had 
not killed the boy he would have resolved with little 
"Robert Reed," of old school reader fame, never again 
to touch the filthy weed. In the first crowd the con- 
gressional candidate handed round his box of cigars. 
They were taken readily and lighted. The smokers 
were hardened frontiersmen in large part, inured to 
hardships and accustomed to the odor of the corrals, 
but when forty or fifty of those cigars began to burn 
more or less freely, those men began to cast on each 
other looks of suspicion. One of them intimated to his 
neighbor that it was all right, of course, to kill the 
pesky varmints that came prowling round the place, 
but a man ought at least hang his clothes out in the 
air for a few hours before coming into a crowd that 
way. When the real cause of the trouble was de- 
termined a friend of the candidate called him to one 
side and said: "Of course, Mr. Long, we old regulars 
who vote our tickets straight are goin' to stay with 
you. We are willin' to make even greater sacrifices for 
the Grand Old Party than this, but there are a lot 
of independent voters in this district who went off and 
voted the Pop ticket two years ago. If they are 
handled right they will come back this year and vote 
with us, but if you go to distributin' them cigars regu- 
lar there is simply no hope. The impression is likely 
to get out that you are tryin' to poison your con- 
stituents." 

In 1894 Chester was renominated and the tide of 
Populism had so far waned that he was elected. He 
was renominated again in 1896, but the free silver 
sentiment was so powerful that year in Kansas that 



280 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Jerry Simpson defeated him by something over 3,000 
majority, although Long made a thorough and strong 
campaign in opposition to the silver theory. That 
ended the free silver issue and the Populist party went 
out of business as a party. Mr. Long was elected in 
1898, 1900 and 1902 by comfortable majorities, but 
was elected to the United States Senate by the legisla- 
ture of 1903 and therefore did not serve his fourth term 
in the lower house. In the United States Senate Ches- 
ter I. Long was counted a "standpatter" while the senti- 
ment of Kansas was tending more and more strongly 
toward a more radical brand of politics. It was this 
popular tendency that caused his defeat for renomina- 
tion and swept Joseph L. Bristow into a seat among 
the mighty. 

I have heard men attribute Long's defeat to his lack 
of ability as a "mixer." All that is necessary to re- 
fute that theory is to gaze for a few brief moments on 
the attenuated and also elongated form of Joe Bristow. 
In comparison with Joe Bristow an icicle seems like con- 
centrated sunshine or a modern heater in action. I have 
my doubts, anyway, about the efficacy of the made-to- 
order smile and the glad hand in politics in Kansas. 
The Kansas voter is peculiar in that he is liable to con- 
clude that the candidate who is particularly effusive 
in his handshaking and verbal glucose, is trying to put 
something over on the sovereign squatter who does the 
voting. Mr. Long was defeated not because the voters 
of Kansas doubted his ability or his integrity, but be- 
cause a majority of them did not believe that he at that 
time represented their political views. Bristow was 
nominated and elected because the majority believed 
he did represent their views. 



KANSAS GROWING UP 281 



Governor Allen's Maiden Speech 

In Hillsdale County, Michigan, lives an old farmer, 
Ben E. Kies, who in the days when the Farmers' 
Alliance was the dominant power in Kansas, was a 
prime mover and trusted adviser of the organization. 
Kies was a shoe merchant in Medicine Lodge, the 
trusted friend and admirer of Jerry Simpson, and more 
than any other man responsible for Jerry's entry into 
politics. It was he who induced the "sockless states- 
man" to become a candidate for the legislature and 
afterward at the Kinsley convention waved aside the 
proffered honor of a nomination to Congress and 
urged instead the nomination of Jerry Simpson. He 
afterward quit the business of selling shoes, started the 
publication of the Wichita Commoner, beating William 
J. Bryan to the name by several years, and as pub- 
lisher for the few hectic years while the Populist party 
was a potent force in politics, his paper wielded per- 
haps the greatest influence of any publication of that 
political faith. All this is preparatory to the state- 
ment that it was Ben E. Kies, the old Michigan 
farmer, who first brought the now celebrated Governor 
of Kansas before an audience, hostile to the last de- 
gree and under circumstances most painful and em- 
barrassing to the boy orator, who, with most unpropi- 
tious environment and with exceedingly serious handi- 
caps, by the exercise of ready wit and resourcefulness 
saved himself from disastrous consequences, if he did 
not score an oratorical triumph. 

Henry J. Allen was not cradled in luxury. He 
worked during his young manhood as a barber in the 
city of Topeka to earn money enough to pay his way 
through college and after he had finished his college 
experience got a job as reporter on the Salina Repub- 



282 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Heart, then owned and edited by J. L. Bristow, after- 
ward United States senator. In October, 1891, the 
Farmers' Alliance had reached and passed the zenith 
of its influence and power. The evidences of dissolu- 
tion were already discernible to the closely observing, 
but like a great flywheel which continues to revolve for 
a good while after the force which put it in motion 
has abated, the Alliance was still, to the superficial ob- 
server, a powerful organization. It was in this mild 
October of 1891 that some five hundred delegates met 
in Salina in the annual Alliance convention. Major 
J. K. Hudson was then the militant proprietor of the 
Topeka Daily Capital and fighting the Alliance and 
Populism with his usual uncompromising vigor. He 
called a young reporter, L. L. Kiene, and told him to 
go to Salina and get a report of the Alliance conven- 
tion. 

"They don't like me or my paper," said the major, 
"but I want you to find out what they do and report 
the meeting as accurately as possible." 

Kiene went to Salina and there entered into a sort 
of offensive and defensive alliance with young Allen, 
the object being somehow or other to get the proceed- 
ings of that secret convention. The first day the task 
was easy, for the two reporters found a disgruntled 
delegate who was sore on the Alliance and ready to give 
away its deliberations. The reports published in the 
Capital and Republican caused great excitement among 
the delegates who were still loyal, but they could not 
tell whether they were being betrayed by a traitor in 
their own camp or a spy who had managed somehow 
to get into the building. On the second or third day 
of the convention the disgruntled delegate went home 
and that shut off the reporters' source of news. The 
next day they managed to bribe the janitor of the 
building to leave a side door unlocked during the noon 



KANSAS GROWING UP 283 

hour, and through this they slipped in, and then up 
to the dark attic, where they concealed themselves near 
a ventilator shaft that connected the assembly room 
with the upper room. The attic was unfloored, dark 
as a dungeon, and covered with a tin roof which con- 
centrated the heat rays from the Kansas sun. October 
in Kansas is often decidedly like summer and with the 
sun beating down on the tin roof the temperature rose 
nearly to the boiling point. Neither of these reporters 
had reached the degree of fatness they have acquired 
since, but at that they were a couple of most uncom- 
fortable young men. Pretty soon they heard the tramp 
of the delegates filing into the hall, and then the 
rapping of the chairman's gavel as he called the as- 
sembly to order. 

The president of the Alliance was Captain Frank 
McGrath, of Beloit. He had been one of the most 
celebrated and efficient of the frontier sheriffs who made 
a marvelous record for daring and efficiency. Frank 
McGrath was a born hunter of criminals. Fearless 
and untiring, and with an almost uncanny knowledge 
of the habits of the bad men who infested the border, 
he rarely, if ever, failed to get a man when he started 
after him. He was often in positions of great danger, 
but never hesitated to take the chance and seemed to 
bear a charmed life. McGrath was instinctively against 
mob law, which fact had a bearing on the results 
told in this story. Hardly had the president rapped 
for order and the delegates become quiet when he 
announced that there must be either spies or a traitor 
in the building and the first business would be to ap- 
point a committee of three to search the building. 
"On that committee," said the president, "I will ap- 
point brother B. F. Kies and two others," mentioning 
them. "They will proceed at once to make a thorough 
search and find the culprit." 



284 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

Although the temperature in the attic was well up 
toward a hundred, the two reporters experienced some- 
thing of a chill when they heard that announcement. 
They decided that it would be best for them to separate 
as far as possible, lie flat between the joists and trust 
to the darkness of the unlighted attic for escape. The 
future governor took one corner of the attic and Kiene 
the other. The committee headed by Ben Kies came 
clumping up the attic stairs. Tramping carefully but 
with determination from one joist to another, they 
lighted matches to dissipate the gloom. Allen was 
lying low in one corner, with nothing to support him 
but the frail laths that held the plastering, trusting 
to luck and a kindly Providence. 

It was Kies who discovered him and announced his 
discovery with triumphant voice. 

"You may as well get up and come along with us," 
commanded Kies. 

The future governor announced with as steady tones 
as he could command that he was perfectly willing to 
go. He felt, however, that his wishes in the matter 
would cut little figure, which conclusion was confirmed 
by the firm grasp the committeemen took on various 
parts of his person and the forcible way in which they 
hustled him toward the attic stair. When he was 
brought before the assembled delegates there was a 
moment's hush and then a general yell, "Kill the spy! 
Kill the spy ! He is one of Joe Hudson's hirelings. 
Kill him !" 

There was a rush toward the stage and it would have 
gone hard with the young reporter if it had not been 
that McGrath was chairman. As I have said, he was 
instinctively opposed to mob law and he was able to 
control that assembly. 

"Be quiet, brothers," he said, "we will hear what 
this young man has to say." Then, turning to the 



KANSAS GROWING UP 285 

dust-begrimed, cobweb-covered and freely perspiring re- 
porter, he said: "Young man, why were you in that 
attic and what have you to say for yourself ?" 

It was Henry Allen's maiden effort as a speaker be- 
fore a large crowd, but he rose to the occasion. As 
he stood there he was not a presentable figure, dirty, 
sweaty, and generally disheveled, but that may have 
helped him. He probably was not in a mirthful frame 
of mind, but he managed to face the crowd with the 
semblance of a grin and said : "Gentlemen of the 
Alliance, you don't know how much it pains me to ap- 
pear before you in this condition." 

In those days the average Alliance man was disposed 
to take matters very seriously. They had visions of 
the "Great Red Dragon," the "Altar of Mammon," 
and the "Seven Great Conspiracies," but there were 
men in that audience who had a saving sense of humor 
and the opening statement of the young reporter sort 
of caught them, and when he followed with the further 
statement, "I assure you, gentlemen, that this recep- 
tion is wholly unexpected. I hardly supposed that I 
would be greeted with so much enthusiasm," several 
of the delegates laughed aloud. 

"I admit, gentlemen," continued Allen, "that I was 
in the attic, and if you want further evidence the gen- 
tlemen composing this committee who have so insistently 
escorted me to this platform, will testify to the fact, 
but I am not there now. However, I have heard one 
charge made against me which I most emphatically 
deny ; it is that I am one of Joe Hudson's men. I never 
worked for Joe Hudson in my life and don't know what 
he looks like. I am a reporter on the Salina Republican 
and will confess that I was in the attic to get a report 
of your meeting." 

At this point a number of delegates started another 
movement toward the platform but were checked by the 



286 WHEN KANSAS WAS YOUNG 

chairman, and Henry, with renewed confidence, seeing 
that President McGrath did not intend to permit per- 
sonal violence, proceeded with his remarks. 

"When I went into the attic I did so simply in the 
line of duty. It was my business to get the news and 
you gentlemen guard your proceedings with so much 
care that I was driven to this as a last resort. I ad- 
mit that it was not the right thing to do, but I am 
only a poor reporter and my bread and butter depend 
on my ability to get the news. I am sorry this oc- 
curred and assure you that it will never happen again." 

His ready wit, resourcefulness, and apparent frank- 
ness of statement won him some friends even in that 
hostile audience and there was some scattering ap- 
plause when he closed. Then President McGrath de- 
manded that he give up his notes. 

"I have no notes," said the reporter. 

"Who was with you?" asked McGrath. 

It was at this point that Kiene, listening at the ven- 
tilator shaft, felt the hot and cold flashes chase each 
other up and down his spine, but to his relief the future 
governor lied promptly and calmly like a gentleman. 
It was then that Kiene realized the force of the little 
Sunday-school girl's definition of a lie when she said, 
"A lie is an abomination in the sight of the Lord and 
a very pleasant help in time of trouble." 

In answer to the question Allen promptly and with 
an expression of almost cherubic innocence said, "There 



was no one." 



Kiene breathed easier. 

"Is there any other reporter in the house to your 
knowledge?" asked McGrath. 

"No, sir." 

"Will you promise never to attempt anything of this 
kind again?" 
'Yes, sir." 



<f 



KANSAS GROWING UP 287 

Then the young reporter was taken before the county 
attorney and an effort was made to find a law under 
which he could be prosecuted, but as there was no such 
law, he was released. 

The convention passed some red hot resolutions de- 
nouncing Allen personally and the paper which em- 
ployed him. Allen somewhat surprised the chairman 
of the committee on resolutions by asking for a copy 
of the resolution for publication. 

Freed, as they supposed, from spying ears and eyes, 
the delegates proceeded with their secret conference 
while Kiene, sweating, but happy in the attic, took 
notes of the deliberations and furnished a full report 
both to the Capital and the Salina Republican. 

During the nearly twenty-nine years which have 
elapsed since that hot October day, the young re- 
porter has acquired nation-wide fame as an orator and 
as the chief executive of the great state in which he 
was born, but never did his natural facility as a speaker 
stand him so much in hand as when he was dragged 
before that convention of wrathful delegates, the ma- 
jority of whom would just then have watched him 
hang, if not with positive satisfaction, at least with a 
feeling that justice had been in a measure satisfied. 



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